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By Bill Holloway
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released a new report, Approaches to Making Federal Highway Spending More Productive, which outlines problems with the way the federal government spends money on highways and suggests some potential fixes. The report argues that financial challenges have made it even more important that highway funding is spent in the most productive way possible, i.e., maintenance should be prioritized over expansion and spending should better correspond to highways’ use and economic value.
The two most pressing financial issues cited are that fuel tax revenues have not kept pace with federal spending—lawmakers have transferred $143 billion from other sources into the Highway Trust Fund since 2008—and steadily increasing construction costs have reduced the value of revenues collected.
In light of the declining buying power of revenues, the report shines a light on the fact that project spending does not correspond with a highway’s economic value or usage, and it suggests three changes to the Federal Highway Program that could increase the productivity of highway spending:
- Charge drivers for their use of highways—increase tolling or implement mileage-based user fees (VMT fees) at the federal and/or state levels, and charge higher rates when roads are congested.
- Allocate highway funding to states based on the costs and benefits of specific programs and projects.
- Link highway funding to performance on key measures by providing additional funds to states meeting standards or penalizing those that do not.
Increased tolling or implementation of a VMT fee, with rates that vary by route and/or time of day, could both raise revenues and ensure that highly valued freight or drivers on a tight schedule could move at higher speeds on less congested routes. FHWA estimates that widespread congestion pricing would reduce the total capital investment required to meet demand by 30 percent. An added benefit would be that such a system would provide information about how much drivers value the use of roads, which could be used to prioritize future improvements.
Allocating highway spending on the basis of benefit-cost analysis (BCA), rather than on geography or providing fixed allocations to states, could help to channel highway spending toward projects and programs that will yield the greatest economic value. Under a scenario based on an FHWA analysis of 2010 highway projects, where funding is directed toward projects where the benefits exceed costs by the greatest percentages, the relative amounts spent on expansion and repairs would remain relatively steady, while the location of projects would change dramatically. Funding for urban areas would be increased by 43 percent for interstates and 22 percent for other federal-aid roads, and funding for rural areas would decline by 46 percent for interstates and 43 percent for other federal-aid roads. Alternately, funding could be directed toward existing programs, such as TIGER, that allocate funds based on projected benefits and costs. (For more information about how to calculate the economic benefits of transportation projects, see this SSTI report.)
Linking funding to performance measures such as traffic congestion or pavement condition could also improve the productivity of highway spending and might be easier than using pricing or BCA, since performance information can be readily obtained. One potential shortcoming, however, is that it could end up funding projects that fare poorly in BCA.
The full report CBO report is worth a read.
Bill Holloway is a Transportation Policy Analyst at SSTI. | https://ssti.us/2016/02/29/cbo-report-suggests-changes-to-increase-productivity-of-federal-highway-program/ |
Uganda is situated almost entirely within the Nile Basin, with more than 98 percent of the total land area in the basin. It is in the equatorial lakes region, contributing flow to Lake Victoria and other lakes, while the outflow from the other lakes also pass through Uganda before flowing into Sudan. It has a total population of 25.3 million people and total area cover of 236,860 sq. km.
A large part of the area of Uganda (36,000 square kilometers out of a total area of around 236,000 square kilometers) is occupied by lakes, including the largest, Lake Victoria, which forms part of the south-east border. Groundwater is the most important source of potable water in Uganda, especially in the rural areas, and provides 80% or more of the water supply. More than 98 per cent of Uganda falls within the Nile basin and the country occupies a unique and pivotal position in the Nile Basin geographical setting; it is both an upstream and downstream state.
Almost all Uganda’s water resources are trans-boundary in nature since they are part of the Nile. Major trans-boundary water bodies include Lakes Victoria, Albert, Edward and Kyoga and Rivers Kagera, Semliki, Malaba, Sio, Aswa Victoria Nile, Albert Nile and Kyoga Nile. This poses the challenge of Uganda making maximum use of the water resources within its territory for her socio-economic development while not compromising the legitimate right by her neighbours to the same shared resources. Of specific interest is the consumptive use of the Nile waters for irrigated agriculture and domestic and industrial purposes. Uganda is also interested in the regulation of the equatorial lakes for optimal hydropower generation and flood control. As a result, Uganda has been very keen on fostering close collaboration with her neighbours in the joint planning, management and development of the shared water resources.
The water sector is one of the priority sectors in Uganda, as it directly impacts on the quality of life of the people and overall productivity of the population. Despite Uganda’s being well endowed with significant freshwater resources, the challenges of the high annual population growth rate of 3.3% (UBOS, 2002), low industrialization, uncontrolled environmental degradation and pollution are leading to accelerated depletion and degradation of the available water resources. Uganda is also faced with the challenge of low safe water coverage of 65% rural and 67% urban, as of December 2010 (MWE SPR 2010).
Wetlands cover 30,105km2 of Uganda’s total land area of 241,500km2(NEMA 2000). With the coverage of 13% of the total land area, they represent one of the most vital ecological and economic resources the country is endowed with. Destruction of these ecosystems to derive livelihood is a serious environmental problem the country is currently faced with. By the late 1990s, almost 8% of the wetland had been reclaimed (NEMA 2000).
Agriculture is still the largest employer in Uganda. Agriculture is aided by the often fertile soils and regular rainfall over most of the country. The total potential irrigable area in Uganda is approximately 202,000 ha (FAO, 1995). Currently, most of Uganda’s agriculture is rain fed and thus more vulnerable during climatic variations. Food shortages and nutritional deficiencies are common in many parts of the country.
Hydropower is the major source of electrical power in Uganda. Most of Uganda’s hydropower potential is concentrated along the White Nile, with a total estimated potential of 2,000 MW. Overall, only 9 percent of Uganda’s population is supplied with grid electricity (20 percent in urban areas compared to only 3 percent in rural areas). Rural electrification forms an integral part of the Government’s wider rural transformation and poverty eradication agenda.
UGANDA'S PARTICIPATION IN NBI AND LEVEL OF INTEGRATION
Uganda hosts the NBI Secretariat (Nile-SEC) based in Entebbe. Nile-SEC is responsible for building cooperation among Member States and building capacity to conduct basin-wide water resources management. The Ministry of Water and Environment, is NBI’s focal point ministry and its Minister is a member of the Nile-COM. Two senior officials from the Ministry represent the country on the Nile Technical Advisory Committee (Nile-TAC), the Director of Water Resources Management as well as the Commissioner, Department of Water Resources in charge of regulation.
To facilitate in-country coordination of NBI’s activities, Uganda established a focal point institution within the National NBI Office whose specific roles include: to provide a forum for in-country coordination of NBI’s projects and activities; to assist with promoting coordination and integration with other relevant national activities and initiatives as well as logistical arrangements for incoming NBI missions.
The country contributes US$ 50,000 annually towards NBI’s operational costs. This is in addition to providing counterpart funds for all investment projects, as well as hosting and meeting all local costs for Projects Management Units based in Uganda. These include the Confidence Building and Stakeholder Involvement (CBSI) project from July 2004 to December 2009 and the Socio-economic Economic Development and Benefit Sharing (SDBS) project from 2005 to June 2009.
Also worth noting is the in-kind contribution to NBI in terms of supervision and technical guidance by Nile-TAC members, staff time by national staff attending specialized meetings on NBI issues organized at national level, hosting incoming NBI missions and offering office space for Project Management Units based in the country.
Furthermore, staff time through either secondment or direct hire of coordinators based on relevant sector institutions is increasingly being devoted to NBI’s different programs and projects. Steady progress has been made in mainstreaming/integrating NBI activities in the national planning and budgeting processes. Supported by a national water policy that highlights the importance of trans-boundary water resources management, consideration of the regional and basin perspectives is visible in the different national tenets.
NBI’S DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM IN UGANDA
Uganda is implementing NBI’s basin-wide capacity building projects and sub-regional investment projects. The projects are identified and prepared through a participatory process.
CAPACITY BUILDING PROJECTS
Uganda successfully participated in the implementation of the largely completed basin-wide capacity building projects. The on-going Water Resources Planning and Management (WRPM) project is developing the necessary basin-wide management tools and building capacity for best practices. The Regional Power Trade (RPT) project is building capacity for power trade and development through preparation of the Comprehensive Basin Wide assessment of power options in the Nile Basin.
INVESTMENT PROJECTS
These projects fall under the Water Resources Development function of NBI. The portfolio of investment projects is categorised into three sectors: Power, Agriculture, and River Basin Management. This represents the priority needs of member countries – for increased access to reliable and cheap electricity, for increased food security and productivity and for increased protection and management of the environment as a basis for livelihoods of the basin populations. Projects active in Uganda are spearheaded, prepared and coordinated by NBI’s Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Program (NELSAP) Coordination Unit based in Kigali, Rwanda. Project implementation is undertaken at national level.
INVESTMENT PROJECTS UNDER IMPLEMENTATION
Power
Regional Transmission Interconnection Project
Over 769 km of 220 kV and 110 kV transmission lines and associated sub-stations to be constructed, to interconnect electric grids. This will improve access to electricity through increased cross-border sharing of energy and power. The National Project Implementation Unit is located at NELSAP-CU offices.
Overall, the project consists of three Components as follows:
i.) 220 KV Uganda (Bujagali) – Kenya (Lessos) interconnection (256 km);
ii.) 220 KV Uganda (Mbarara) – Rwanda (Kigali) interconnection (172 km);
iii.) Rwanda - Burundi - DRC (Eastern part) (R-B-C) Interconnections:
a) Ruzizi - Bujumbura (112 km) to Kiliba (19 km)
b) Ruzizi - Goma (150 km)
c) Kibuye - Gisenyi-Goma-Kigali about 200 km
d) 110 KV Rwanda (Kigoma) – Burundi (Rwegura) about 120km.
Agriculture
Lakes Edward and Albert Fisheries and Water Resources Project
The project will contribute to improved environmental management and sustainable management of natural resources. The project is operational in Bushenyi, Kasese, Rukungiri, Bundibugyo, Kibaale, Hoima, Buliisa and Nebbi districts. Its Project Management Unit will be located in Kabarole district, Fort portal.
Regional Agricultural Trade and Productivity Project
This project will carry out studies that will highlight potential agriculture and agricultural trade opportunities in the Nile basin countries and beyond. It will also increase knowledge of basin agriculture in NBI institutions as well as promote more efficient and sustainable use of water resources and economically viable investment in agriculture.
River Basin Management
Kagera River Basin Management Project
The project will establish a sustainable framework for the joint management of the water resources of the Kagera basin, in order to prepare for sustainable development oriented investments to improve the living conditions of the people and to protect the environment. This project is operational in Kabale, Isingiro, Ntungamo and Rakai districts.
Sio-Malaba-Malakisi River Basin Management Project
The project will establish a sustainable framework for the joint management of the water resources of the Sio-Malaba-Malakisi sub-basin; in order to prepare for sustainable development oriented investments to improve the living conditions of the people and to protect the environment. The project is operational in eight districts of Bududa, Bugiri, Busia, Butaleja, Manafwa, Namutumba, Pallisa and Tororo.
BENEFITS OF THE NILE COOPERATION
Through its three core functions of: Building Cooperation, Water Resource Management and Water Resource Development, NBI provides Uganda with:
Building Cooperation
• A platform upon which the Nile Council of Ministers can dialogue on management and development of the shared water resources of the Nile
• A forum for technical exchange of ideas and experiences within water resources, natural resource management, power generation and trade
• Capacity building activities aimed at strengthening the ability of both people and institutions in different water related areas
Water Resource Management
• A mechanism for basin wide exchange of information and prior notification for water resources development
• State-of-the-art technical tools for organizing, storing, analyzing and disseminating data and information collected by NBI programs and projects, including computer based databases with information such as discharge data for sub-basins and watershed, GIS information, biodiversity inventories, stakeholder inventories. The Nile Decision Support System (DSS) tool to facilitate strategic based wide planning and knowledge based policy and decision making. Also interactive CDs and web-based inventories such as the Nile-Information System (Nile-IS).
• Technical support in strengthening national water policy frameworks with a key focus on strengthening the consideration of the trans-boundary dimension.
• Knowledge on the basin’s water resources and monitoring of the basin’s health
• Analysis and scenarios development for sustainable resource management and for planning to maximize development opportunities at basin, sub basin and national levels
• Analytic tools and a shared information system that will enable monitoring and the sustainable management of the basin
• Better understanding and cooperative management of risk for a changing and uncertain climate
Water Resource Development
• Identification of development opportunities focused on power trade and generation, agriculture and river basin management
• Preparation of investment projects which contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction
• Assessing costs and benefits of participation in proposed projects and facilitate agreements on how to share costs and benefits with other beneficiary country.
• Projects implementation support including resource mobilization and preparation of multi-country agreements
• Technical assistance, know-how and expertise in project supervision
SPECIFIC BENEFITS INCLUDE:
Early benefits
• Ability to share and exchange water resource data with the rest of NBI member countries, following the adoption by the Nile-COM in July 2009, of the formal protocol developed under NBI.
• Use of the Decision Support System (DSS), a Basin-wide planning tool which enables decision makers to select the optimum investment planning options and best water resources management practices at national and regional levels.
• A trans-boundary wetlands management plan was developed for the sio-siteko wetlands along the Uganda-Kenya border and is under implementation.
• Increased human capacity including Post Graduate training in Integrated Water Resource Management.
• Trans-boundary policy frameworks, policies, guidelines, data and information base for water resources management.
• Communities have benefited from various small scale projects. For example, over 7,000 people from Kabale district provided with clean and safe water from Phase 1 of the Katuna water supply; more than 10,000 people in Tororo district were given access to clean and safe water from the Mella Water supply and sanitation project; more than 500,000 dwellers of Malaba town are benefiting from the Malaba Storm Water Drainage Master Plan; a total of 2,300 people in Busia district have been provided with community fish ponds/aquaculture development project.
• Agro forestry projects have been established in Kabarole, Rakai and Ntungamo districts.
• Hosting the Nile Basin Initiative Secretariat offices in Entebbe.
Future Benefits
• Improved environmental and sustainable management of natural resources resulting from implementation of the Integrated Management Plan and Investment Project for Lakes Edward and Albert, among others.
• Institutional Framework for trans-boundary Sustainable Joint Management of the Sio-Malaba-Malakisi sub-basin, enhancing cooperation between Uganda and Kenya authorities.
• Increased and stable power supply leading to economic growth and better quality of life of citizens
• Increased food security and productivity.
Indirect benefits
• Ability to overcome associated impacts of climate change that are mostly manifesting through the hydrological cycle. These include floods and droughts that lead to serious water scarcity and food shortage.
• Enhanced Regional cooperation, peace, security and political stability, markets, trade, hence economic growth.
• The annual Nile Basin Football Tournament that creates social capital amongst the partner states’ citizens. | http://nileis.nilebasin.org/content/uganda |
It isn’t cheap to treat water so that it is safe to drink. But it also isn’t cheap to treat everyone who becomes ill during a waterborne illness outbreak. This diagram shows the relationship between the risk of contamination and level of water protection. As the level of protection becomes more effective, the cost of water treatment generally rises, as well. Unfortunately, government agencies generally attempt to minimize costs while the health effects have not been properly assessed.
However, this approach results in some serious problems. In developing countries, waterborne disease epidemics are common. Many people like to think that developed countries are safe from contaminated water. But, in 1993, the United States Environmental Protection Agency estimated that about 403,000 people became ill, and more than 100 people died, when Cryptosporidium contaminated the water supply in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And, in 2000, E. coli contaminated the water supply in Walkerton, Ontario, causing seven deaths, and over 2000 illnesses. In North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 2001, Cryptosporidium contaminated the water and was responsible for between 5800 and 7100 illnesses.
When a community experiences a waterborne illness outbreak, we hear about it. But there are a significant number of illnesses that we do not hear about. Health Canada only tracks a select few diseases that are commonly waterborne. Furthermore, the actual number of cases of waterborne illnesses is usually about ten times higher than the reported number.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are between four and 33 million cases of gastrointestinal illness associated with public drinking water systems in the United States each year. This number does not include the number of illnesses due to private water sources, recreational water sources, or illnesses other than diarrhea. When there are outbreaks of E. coli , Cryptosporidium , or other waterborne pathogens, the recovery and repair costs are substantial. This begs the question: is it better to treat the water to ensure that it is safe for human consumption, or is it alright to provide minimal water treatment and hope for the best?
Who is Responsible for Making Sure our Drinking Water is Safe?
The legislation and standards of drinking water vary from country to country. In Canada, the federal government sets guidelines for drinking water, and each provincial and territorial government is responsible for drinking water provisions within their province or territory. Due to funding, facilities and water that may be difficult to treat, each province and territory can decide which guidelines they will follow and which they will not.
The exception to provincial and territorial responsibility for water is in the case of national parks, military bases and First Nations communities, where the federal government is responsible for drinking water. For First Nations communities south of 60 degrees parallel, responsibility for drinking water is shared between the First Nations community and the federal government. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) provides funding and Health Canada provides water quality monitoring assistance for the distribution system. The federal government needs to also monitor the raw water so that it can tell which water treatment plants work. In the territories (north of 60 degrees parallel), the territorial governments and INAC are responsible for safe drinking water provisions in both First Nations and non-First Nations communities.
How are Water Treatment Facilities Funded?
Water treatment and distribution systems are generally funded by local municipalities and cities, sometimes supplemented by meager amounts from the federal and provincial governments. According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, 92 cents of every tax dollar goes to the federal and provincial governments, which leaves cities with only 8 cents from each tax dollar to use to fund a number of services. And, it has been estimated that the public water infrastructure in Canada has a deficit of over $50 billion.
First Nations communities receive funding from INAC and the local community. For example, according to INAC, in June 2007, a new water treatment plant opened in Mashteuiatsh, an Innu community in Quebec. For this project, INAC provided $4.2 million and the community invested an additional $1.2 million. But many First Nations communities have water facilities that are comparable to conditions in developing countries. Health Canada generally invests around $5 million each year to protect and enhance drinking water quality on reserves. In the 2003 federal budget, the government committed themselves to investing $600 million over five years to support the First Nations Water Management Strategy.
To put that into perspective, consider this: According to the city of Winnipeg, it will cost about $214 million, plus $12.75 million per year to design, engineer, construct, and maintain a UV disinfection system. The amount of money that the federal government allocates to protecting and enhancing drinking water on reserves is not nearly enough to repair the situation that many drinking water facilities are in.
Who is Responsible for Providing Healthcare in Canada? How is Healthcare Funded?
territory. The Canadian healthcare system is funded by the federal and provincial governments.
Ultimately, healthcare is funded from personal and corporate income tax. Some provinces, such as Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario, also charge supplemental health premiums. The federal government contributes a sum of money to the provinces for healthcare, investing over $30 billion in some years. Healthcare expenditures, however, total more than $100 billion each year, which works out to more than $3000 per capita. In 2003, of the countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States spent the most on healthcare (at $5635 per capita), followed by Norway (at $3807 per capita), Switzerland (at $3781 per capita) and Canada (at $3001 per capita). The lowest expenditures occurred in Mexico (at $583 per capita) and Turkey (at $513 per capita). Compare that with the healthcare expenditures in developing countries, which tend to be less than one-tenth the amount that most European countries, as well as Canada and the United States, pay per capita per year. For example, in 1994, Costa Rica spent the most on healthcare, out of any developing country, and that was only $140 per capita per year!
By 2005, in Canada, average expenditures had risen to approximately $4400 per capita. The lowest healthcare expenditures in Canada occur in Quebec, where the average is $3900 per capita. The highest healthcare expenditures occur in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, where the averages range from $6000 to $10,700 per capita.
When the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a cost benefit analysis of improving water and sanitation services at an international level, they estimated the healthcare cost associated with a diarrheal illness to be between $10 and $23, depending on the geographic region. Healthcare costs are higher in remote areas, which means that, in providing safe drinking water in isolated regions, healthcare costs can be reduced by a significant amount.
Using the low estimate of $10 per diarrheal illness, the United States could avoid between four and 33 million dollars in healthcare costs for diarrheal illnesses each year if drinking water was effectively treated! Though there are fewer people in Canada, it is likely that Canada could also save millions of dollars in healthcare costs as well. And these cost savings only include healthcare costs associated with diarrheal illnesses; when productive days that are lost to illness are considered, the saved expenses could by many times higher.
What Kinds of Costs are Associated with Waterborne Disease Outbreaks?
1. Direct economic benefits of avoiding waterborne illnesses. This simply refers to the amount of money that is saved from healthcare expenses.
2. Indirect economic benefits, which includes a decrease in work days lost to illness and a longer lifespan, because these benefits enable people to work more.
3. Non-health benefits include a decrease in time spent collecting water (especially for people who have long distances to walk to get water), an increase in property prices around water sources, and increased time spent in leisure activities.
1. Avoided illnesses; which are then classified into decreased mortality (or less premature deaths) and decreased morbidity (or less people who experience a reduction in their physical or mental well-being from a disease).
2. Enhanced aesthetic qualities, where aesthetic qualities refer to the taste, odour and colour of the water. People often base their confidence in the safety of the water on aesthetic factors, so when the taste, odour and colour of the water improves, consumer satisfaction also improves.
3. Avoided cost of averting behaviour, where averting behaviour refers to the use of water treatments, such as filters and reverse osmosis units, on tap water. Effective treatment removes the need for water treatment in the home, and also reduces human exposure to the contaminants that may be in their water.
4. Avoided material damage, such as corrosion and breakage of pipes. Minimizing the damage of materials also reduces the amount of water lost due to leakage.
5. Avoided cost of market production, which means that when restaurants, food processors and manufacturing industries do not have to treat water before using it, they pass on these savings to the consumers.
6. Nonuse benefits, such as personal satisfaction from the knowledge that others have access to safe drinking water or that natural resources are being protected.
7. Information benefits, meaning that when people have access to public information about their water, they can make informed decisions and avoid threats to their health.
What kinds of costs are associated with effective water treatment facilities?
The costs of treating water vary, depending on the quality of the raw water, the type of treatment, and the quality of existing facilities. In 1998, the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association estimated that $27.5 billion would have to be invested in water treatment and distribution systems over the following 15 years.
1. Halve the proportion of people who do not have access to improved water sources by 2015.
2. Halve the proportion of people who do not have access to improved water sources and improved sanitation.
3. Provide access to improved water and improved sanitation for all.
4. In addition to improving water and sanitation for all, provide a minimum of water disinfection at the point of use.
5. Provide access to a regulated piped water supply and sewage connection into houses for all.
The following table shows the initial costs for several regions, by type of water and sanitation improvement.
This next table shows the annual cost per capita, for operating and management expenses.
You can see that the costs of installing safe drinking water measures are relatively small, especially when compared with the long list of benefits of safe drinking water.
So which is More Cost-effective: Treating the Illnesses as they Occur or Treating the Water so that it is Safe?
The most noticeable and measurable benefit of effectively treated water for drinking is the reduction of waterborne illnesses. The following chart shows the estimated number of diarrheal illnesses that could be avoided each year by the improvement of water and sanitation services.
You can see that, if everyone in the world had access to the water and sanitation services that most of us in Canada enjoy, the number of cases of diarrhea would be reduced by about 75 percent! Through the decrease in diarrheal illnesses, total health costs in many areas of the world can also be significantly reduced. The following chart shows the estimated healthcare costs that would be saved due to the reduction in diarrhea caused by unsafe drinking water.
Around the world, between two and five billion dollars could be saved in healthcare costs each year, just for diarrheal illnesses! This next chart illustrates the estimated number of productive days that could be gained due to the decrease in diarrheal illnesses. This estimate is based on an assumption that, for each case of adult diarrhea, two work days are lost.
There is also a substantial gain in the number of school attendance days, as the number of diarrheal illnesses is reduced. Using an average of three days away from school for each case of diarrhea, between 78.7 million and 1.9 billion school days could be gained, depending on the level of intervention. Using the minimum wage as the basis, the value of the productive days that could be gained as illnesses are reduced, is worth between $210 million and $5.5 billion, again depending on the level of intervention.
Many people, especially women, are required to walk for hours each day to fill buckets with water. When these services are improved, the WHO estimates that, around the world, between 29.5 billion and 992.6 billion hours can be saved each year. Again using the minimum wage, that translates to a monetary value between $12 billion and $405.5 billion each year! There seems to be a significant economic value to providing safe drinking water. This next chart provides a summary of all savings, illustrating the sum of all economic benefits for the various intervention levels.
So, the cost benefit analysis that the World Health Organization undertook tells us that, globally, between $18.142 billion and $555.901 billion could be saved if drinking water and sanitation services were improved. This total doesn’t even take into consideration the human right to water, and the immeasurable cost of losing a friend or family member to a waterborne illness! Finally, this last chart shows the cost benefit ratio for each region and intervention. A cost benefit ratio less than one would indicate that the costs outweigh the benefits. A number greater than one indicates that the benefits outweigh the costs, and the greater the number, the greater the difference between economic benefits and costs. For example, in Africa, intervention level one would produce economic benefits that are 11.50 times higher than the costs of constructing drinking water and sanitation facilities.
What About Here in Canada?
Let’s turn from an international focus to a national focus. In May and June of 2000, the water supply in Walkerton, Ontario, became contaminated with the E. coli bacteria. In the end, there were seven deaths and more than 2000 people became ill. Households and businesses could not use their water for eight months, as every component of the water supply system, right up to the kitchen taps, had to be disinfected. The following table summarizes the calculated economic cost estimates of the water crisis.
costs for treatment, water pickup, food replacement and travel costs. The total costs for healthcare were in the range of $6.6 million. The cost to repair the water treatment plant was almost $10 million.
After the Walkerton crisis, a study was done to find an alternative long-term water source. There were two options, one costing approximately two million dollars and the other costing about six million dollars. To account for leasing the present water filtration system while the new one is constructed, it is estimated that the two million dollar option would cost a minimum of three million dollars, and could well exceed ten million dollars. But, compare the ten million dollars for the water treatment system with the $64.5 million that the Walkerton crisis ended up costing! And, that doesn’t even take into consideration the value of lives lost and illnesses suffered. The author of the study, attempting to put a statistical value on a human life, estimated these costs at $90.8 million, bringing the total cost of Walkerton to $155 million!
In the Cryptosporidium outbreak in North Battleford, the costs were slightly lower, as no one died as a result. However, a group of 700 people who become ill received $3.2 million for compensation. The estimated costs for legal fees and the public inquiry were approximately $400,000. After the outbreak, the city committed itself to building a new sewage treatment plant for $15 million. Even with minimal data, it is easy to see the costs that the city of North Battleford could have saved by ensuring that the water treatment facility could produce safe drinking water. For more information about waterborne disease outbreaks (in particular, those that occurred in Walkerton, Ontario; North Battleford, Saskatchewan; New Orleans, Louisiana and Milwaukee, Wisconsin), see the lesson plan in Operation Water Health called “Cases of Contamination”.
Though these outbreaks may be caused by different contaminants, in different areas of the world and in various levels of severity, they all have one thing in common: waterborne disease outbreaks are avoidable, and the benefits to providing safe drinking water always outweigh the costs of building the infrastructure to ensure effective water treatment.
Did you know that our Operation Water Health program provides teachers with the information they need to teach their students about what healthy drinking water is, what unhealthy drinking water is, and health problems that can be caused by drinking unhealthy drinking water? Please help us to keep our Operation Water Health program updated! Please chip in $5 or donate $20 or more and receive an Official Donation Receipt for Income Tax Purposes.
Yes! I want to donate to help students learn about health concerns related to unsafe drinking water!
Brubaker, Elizabeth. 2002. Lessons from Walkerton.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 2003. $3.2 million for North Battleford water victims.
Hutton, Guy & Haller, Laurence. 2004. Evaluation of the Costs and Benefits of Water and Sanitation Improvements at the Global Level.
Insurance Canada. 2005. Health care spending to reach $142 billion this year.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. March 2007. Notice to Readers: World Water Day -- March 22, 2007. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5610a7.htm.
Saskatchewan Government. 2007. 2007-2008 Saskatchewan Provincial Budget Performance Plan: Safe Drinking Water Strategy. | https://www.safewater.org/fact-sheets-1/2017/1/23/cost-benefit-analysis |
One of the objectives of the decentralized policy is to bring Political and administrative control of services to the point of delivery, thereby improving accountability and effectiveness; and to promote ownership by the general population, of projects executed in their localities. This has effectively taken democracy beyond just an electoral process to empowering citizens to actively participate in the decision processes through structures specially designed to enhance accountability.
In effect, the Country has realized remarkable achievements with an upsurge in physical social investments in health, education, roads and water sectors leading to improved quality of service delivery. All these are as a result of improvement in participatory Governance at the local level.
To further augment the mandate of Local Governments, Cabinet created the Local Government sector which became operational in July 2019 to comprise the Ministry of Local Government, the Local Government Finance Commission and all Local Government Votes with the eventual objective of Improving performance and functionality of Local Governments structures and systems.
The Ministry of Local Government has remained steadfast in its commitment to supporting the implementation of the Decentralization Policy and have also shifted the scope of policy focus from administrative and service delivery mandates of Local Governments to the sixth objective of decentralization namely; emphasis on Local Economic Development, wealth creation and job creation.
With Uganda’s significant comparative advantage in Agriculture, the Ministry and the entire Local Government Sector is now fast-tracking initiatives to create local wealth through Agro-industrialization, focusing on infrastructural development, tourism, production and marketing, and skilling for Human Capital Development.
FOCUS ON LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Following Government’s adoption of the promotion of Local Economic Development as a sixth objective of the Decentralization Policy and a subsequent development of the Uganda National Local Economic Development Policy of 2014, The Ministry of Local Government created the Department of Local Economic Development to help support Local Governments to attract investments basing on their natural and strategic competencies.
This will go a long way in deepening the decentralization process, eradicating poverty and ensure inclusive, sustainable and equitable economic growth.
Through the LED Department, the Ministry specifically aims to:
i. Support to Local Governments to incorporate LED activities into the LG Planning and budgeting:
ii. Promote of employment and wealth creation through support to the development of new industrial/business parks to promote skilling of women and youth, production and wealth creation.
iii. Re-orient LGs from a consumptive nature into business orientation and investment through enhanced production with a view to expanding local revenue generation by LGs
iv. Support to the development of public infrastructure to boost production and market accessibility
v. Supporting intra-private sector dialogues, cooperation and networks to encourage experience sharing, and
vi. Facilitating private investments through linkages with MDAs and other regulatory bodies
vii. Creating awareness within Local Governments aimed at causing a paradigm shift from consumptive nature into business orientation and investment.
The Ministry of Local Government has provided leadership and support to various LED initiatives and this include,
• Presidential Initiative to Promote Agro-Industrialization for Local Economic Development (Agri-LED) which allows local people to identify investment opportunities in their areas with the aim of maximizing Local Economic Development. The initiative is currently piloted in the eight districts of Bundibugyo, Bunyangabo, Kabarole, Kamwenge, Kasese, Kyegegwa, Kyenjojo, Ntoroko and the Municipalities of Kasese and Fort portal. Since the actual implementation of Agri-LED is done at the Local Government level, the main role of the Ministry of Local Government is to coordinate other MDAs to provide guidance to the Local Governments and the Private Sector during the implementation of the homegrown projects in the region.
The Ministry, in partnership with other stakeholders has already carried out a detailed feasibility study on all viable projects for incorporation into Government’s project implementation plan.
• Rwenzori Region Presidential Initiative for Zonal Industrial Parks for Skills Development, Value Addition, and Wealth creation. Support included engaging LGs to provide land for the Parks as such industrial parks have been launched in the following areas: Kayunga, Masaka, Mbarara, Gulu, Kasese, Mubende, Fort Portal, Kyenjojo, Jinja, Zombo, Lira, Mbale, Kyegegwa, Kabale, Ntoroko, Adjumani and Soroti. The launch of three zones comprising of Kampala, Masindi and Napak is still pending.
In addition to supporting Local Governments to exploit their potential in enhancing Local Economic Development; The Ministry of Local Government has also been a preferred executing agency for specific government projects and interventions, specifically designed to drive Local Economic growth in all parts of the country:
The Community Agricultural Infrastructure Improvement Programme (CAIIP)
The CAIIP program was implemented in phases between 2007 and 2017. The program covered agro-processing Facilities and improvement of Rural Roads and Markets in at least two thirds of the Country (90 District Local Governments). It was aligned to the second National Development Plan, the government vision of prosperity for all and the Agricultural Sector Development Strategy and Investment Plan. also in line with the 10 year District Urban and Community Access Roads Improvement Plan whose objective is to improve accessibility to District and Community access roads.
Under the program, the Government was able to:
i) Open and/or reconstruct a total of 11,472.1Km of Community Access Roads and 808.4Km of District Feeder Roads under the rural infrastructure improvement component. The improved state of the road network has led to a reduction of travel time and the cost of transport and, improved access to social services such as health facilities, water, markets, and schools.
i) Procure and install a total of 254 assorted Agro-Processing Facilities (49 Rice hullers, 105 Maize Mills, 50 Coffee hullers and 56 Milk coolers and 37 grain mills) according to the specialties of the project district Local Governments. This intervention has significantly reduced the proportion of produce lost after harvest for major Agro products especially milk Maize, bananas, Cassava, and Rice. Moreover, with a good road network, Farmers have been able to attract competitive prices for their produce.
ii) Connect 96.2Km of National Electric Power grid to the Agro-processing Facilities to enable them to function effectively.
iii) Constructed 77 Rural Roadside markets.
THE MARKETS AND AGRICULTURAL TRADE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME (MATIP)
The MATIP program is well aligned to the National and Regional Priorities, responsive to the Government’s strategy for economic growth and poverty reduction through the enhanced commercialization of agriculture and the National Vision 2040 which seeks to have a Transformed Ugandan Society from a Peasant to a Modern and Prosperous Country within 30 years and taking Uganda to modernity through job creation and inclusive development.
This program was designed after studies showed that most markets in the country were dilapidated. The feasibility studies also showed that majority of the people that derive their livelihoods from the markets are the women, the elderly and people with disabilities.
The first phase of the program, MATIP -1 covered the re-construction of 9 Markets in 7 urban Councils and Kampala Capital City Authority. The eight Markets in the Municipalities of Jinja, Mbale, and Fort-portal, Hoima, Gulu, Lira, Masaka, and Wandegeya in Kampala Capital City Authority are operational. Busega Market in Rubaga Division, which is the 9th is nearing completion.
The modern markets are designed with lockups, stalls, kiosks, storage facilities, salons, stalls with lockers for foodstuffs, groceries, clothes, shoes; cold rooms for fish and meat storage, fish dressing rooms; space for private service providers like microfinance institutions, health clinics, meeting halls, w and even day-care centres.
The re- development and upgrade of the Markets will be profoundly impactful to the communities within and without by:
Increasing and diversifying trade/enterprises from just trade in agricultural commodities to many other enterprises dealing in livestock drugs and associated products to other high value goods such as general merchandise and pharmaceuticals. In the completed markets under MATIP 1, agricultural produce accounts for only 53.1% of total merchandise, this volume of diversified trade has provided increased employment to vendors and suppliers in these markets. For instance, casual employment increased from 39% to 48% in the new markets. While 30% of the vendors indicated that their stock volumes have increased, 12.2% indicated that they are now selling at higher and better prices.
Increasing revenue collection by Urban Councils due to the formal organization of the markets and revenue enforcement mechanism in place. Previously, this was not possible because of the disorganized trading environment characterized by illegal vending and unregistered vendors. Revenue collection from the markets is projected to increase more due to increase in trade. Moreover, trade between Urban and Rural markets has grown substantively.
Improving working conditions in terms of drainage, sanitation, cleanliness, and hygiene. During a study of the completed markets under the first phase, 60.2% of vendors reported that the markets are very clean, 50.1% indicated that the market is safe and secure.
Improving aesthetic beauty of urban councils, improving the working conditions and sanitation in and around the markets thus guaranteeing the health of vendors and the hygiene of the trade goods. With an improvement in management of the markets and improved security, the vendors' merchandise has been secured and illegal vending of goods has substantially reduced thus increasing market access to operators inside the markets.
A study on the commissioned markets indicated that that savings by vendors have improved as indicated by 82.1% of the vendors who are able to save income from the business, 76.3% are able to reinvest the savings into the same business which is now deemed profitable, 17.9% are able to invest in other assets like land and building a house and about 31.8% have started another business/enterprises as a result of the income gains from the Markets.
THE PROJECT FOR THE RESTORATION OF LIVELIHOODS IN THE NORTHERN REGION (PRELNOR)
Currently, in its fifth year of implementation by the Ministry of Local Government, PRELNOR has made strides in increasing income, food security and reduce the vulnerability of poor rural households in the project areas of Adjumani, Agago, Amuru, Gulu, Kitgum, Lamwo, Nwoya, Omoro and Pader by supporting:
I) Food insecure households, who do not have enough land or resources to produce enough to cover their food needs;
iv) Food secure households who are still vulnerable to climatic or other shocks to their livelihoods but want to improve their agricultural productivity;
v) Market-oriented households with adequate land and some skills which they wish to use to increase their surplus production available for sale.
vi) The vulnerable households who lack the capacity and self-confidence to join community groups, to build their food security and self-reliance to enable them to join groups and benefit from development initiatives.
The project has provided 4,000 vulnerable households with food security grants through input trade fairs.
Extension staff have also been trained as Plant Doctors to aid in Plant Pests, Diseases and Mineral Deficiency Symptoms Diagnosis and Management Options.
Additionally, 2000 households have benefited from Energy Saving Cooking Stoves. In the long run, the energy-saving cook stoves will reduce the pressures exerted on the environment and thus, help mitigate the effects of climate change caused by deforestation.
Because of this initiative, many households in the project area have diversified income sources, the food security status has improved with the majority of them consuming at least two meals per day and they have ample food for over three quarters of the year. Better still, many of them have joined farmer groups through which they can access agricultural information /inputs to improve farming and get higher yields. Also, several members of vulnerable households have joined savings and credit groups through which they can save and acquire loans to meet their needs.
The Ministry of Local Government is the implementing agency/partner of several government interventions the Development Initiatives aimed at stimulating Local Economic Growth based on regional competences.
i) THE LOCAL ECONOMIC GROWTH SUPPORT PROJECT (LEGS)
The Local Economic Growth Support (LEGS) Project, is a follow-on project to the successful Second Millennium Villages Project (MVP-II) being implemented in 17 Districts across the country with the main focus on Local Economic Development with support to agricultural productivity, water supply, irrigation, and micro-finance. The project specifically contributes to five of the Sustainable Development Goals namely (i) No Poverty; (ii) Zero Hunger ;( iv) Clean Water and Sanitation; (vii) affordable and Clean Energy).
The Ministry of Local Government will continue to provide and advocate for a conducive environment, through laws, policies, guidelines, and coordination, for Government to achieve its Vision of transforming Uganda from a Peasant to a Modern and Prosperous Country by 2040 through the established structures under the Decentralized system of governance. | https://molg.go.ug/media/ministry-local-government-supports-local-governance-national-development |
The ICT Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka commenced implementation of the e-Sri Lanka Development Project with the technical support of the World Bank in 2003. Since inception the e-Sri Lanka Development project went through series of improvements and was successfully concluded on 31st December 2013.
After the completion of e-Sri Lanka Development Project, the World Bank undertook a thorough review of e-Sri Lanka overall performance during January – October 2014. Consequently the World Bank released the final version of the Implementation Completion and Results Report (ICRR) through a letter addressed to Secretary to the Treasury dated November 2014. A comprehensive methodology, including a stakeholder consultation process, as well as analyzing data from different sources was used for the review, and the assessment was carried out by a group of consultants appointed from the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the World Bank.
The assessment revealed that during the period, ICTA has developed in to a capable and professional institution which played a substantive role in the significant outcomes that the project has attained. The rating given to outcomes was satisfactory which reflected that ICTA played an essential role in achieving the following key results;
• Modernization of government services, developed several electronic services for citizens and business, and improving internal efficiency of the government
• Provision of affordable access to information infrastructure and services.
• Technical assistance to build capacity for ICT leadership,
• Improved policies and laws required for ICT diffusion,
• Increased ICT literacy in every part of the country,
• Promoting IT and BPO exports, and mobilizing resources and innovation in ICT applications to meet priority social needs.
• Implementing a results based M&E approach to improve project performances and measure outcome/ impacts.
Overall rating for outcomes
According to the ICR, the overall outcome rating given in the assessment was satisfactory.
The ICR report highlighted that the fact that the project remains highly relevant to the country and for the World Bank‘s assistance strategy. Efficiency of achieving the outcomes will also be greatly enhanced by the long-term benefits, especially those related to provision of transparent and efficient government services, increase in specialized ICT skills and ICT literacy at all levels of education and job creation through a dynamic and competitive ICT industry sector.
It was also mentioned that the project significantly contributed to social development, with a special emphasis on integrating the poorest populations of the Southern, Northern and Eastern regions of the country through use of ICTs. Under the project‘s participatory approach, government stakeholders were engaged in the e-Policy, Leadership and Institutional Development Program and the Reengineering Government Program; industry and academia were engaged in the ICT Human Resources Development and Industry Promotion Program; rural populations, through the Telecenter Development Program; and the poorest and most vulnerable populations, through the e-Society Program. Synergies between telecommunications, Telecenter, e-government, and e-society programs were encouraged to render information access and service provision relevant to rural populations.
Strengthening of institutions and ICTA as a e leadership institution
According to the report, world bank has realized through its assessment that the project had a substantive impact on the institutions that participated, which included ICTA, Ministries and other government agencies. e-Sri Lanka entailed a new institution that had to be created from scratch, building on lessons from pioneering nations, and attracting new talents and business-like practices to the government—drawing on local company law and endorsed by a parliament act. ICTA, through the support from the e Sri Lanka project, was able to build its capacity as an e-leadership institution. In addition, the project brought about change in the culture and improved efficiencies in the use of IT by Ministries, Department and private sector institutions, which has now been institutionalized into the government system.
Key success factors contributed to outcomes
The World Bank also recognized that synergy between all the projects implemented by ICTA as a key success factor for achieving the e-Sri Lanka vision. The report identified that the following success factors effected to achieve planned development outcomes/results
Active involvement of ICTA on consolidation and development of the sector: ICTA was instrumental in assisting the government in strengthening the policy framework for the digital economy. ICTA led the successful unification of the eight ICT industry associations, and helped create SLASSCOM—a promising coalition of software and BPO companies. ICTA staff also participated in several government IT-related Tender Boards and assisted ministries and agencies in their capacity as technical experts. ICTA also pioneered the creation of the current Chief Innovation Officer (CIOs) function and the development of CIO staff with a mandate to promote electronic services and ICT usage within their respective agencies which supported project implementation.
Costs savings enhanced efficiency/ Cost effectiveness: Following the Medium Term Review (MTR), several changes were made to the implementation arrangements which led to substantial progress and cost savings, including, formation of technology teams, establishment of Sri Lanka Computing Emergency Readiness Team (SLCERT) and other in-house staffing initiatives such as the Private Sector and e-Society teams.
Expansion of the project to previously inaccessible areas of the country increased its outreach and results: Until 2009 the government was unable to implement several initiatives envisaged under the project in the North and the East of the country due to instability in the area. Once the area stabilized, the government went ahead with implementation in these two provinces. The additional financing approved in 2012 by the Bank was also instrumental in completing these activities in the North and the East.
Strong government support: The government identified ICT as a means of achieving peace, growth and equity through technological and institutional transformation of key sectors of the economy. Government commitment towards the project remained strong throughout the implementation. This is evidenced by the strong support to ICTA, a professional, government agency that implemented the project, while supporting the overall development of the ICT sector in the country.
Implementation and utilization of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E)
The implementation of the e-Sri Lanka Development project was closely monitored in accordance with the M&E plan The majority of data generated through project implementation was collected on a monthly basis using the data collection instruments developed. Baseline and periodic evaluation surveys were conducted based on the agreed set of selected indicators. The findings of the evaluations were consolidated, discussed and reported upon in Evaluation Reports and used to improve performances. M&E capacity was also built among partners and contractors of many e-Sri Lanka projects. The M&E unit was engaged in demonstrating results and lessons learned through workshops to various stakeholders within the government.
The project relevance rated Substantial
The project design was completed during the period of 2002-2003 period and was intended to address the poor coordination of IT related policies/programs, an under developed legal environment for electronic transactions, low ICT literacy, low level of ICT use within government, lack of ICT infrastructure in rural areas and lack of public access points to make ICT affordable to the majority of the population. The project was designed to address these constraints by modernization of government services and to improve access to information, infrastructure and services. The design included technical assistance to build capacity for ICT leadership, improve policies for ICT diffusion, provide ICT literacy, promote ICT education and exports, and mobilize resources and innovation in ICT applications to meet priority social needs
ICT investments require complementary investments in human resources, relevant local content, business process reengineering, and the legal environment in order to reap the potential benefits from productivity and transformation. These areas were incorporated into the project design. Implementation of the various project interventions to enhance growth, employment and equity through affordable access to information technology was highly relevant and outcomes have been substantive
Efficiency / Cost effectiveness of ICTA
In the ICR report achievement of efficiency/cost effectiveness related objectives were given substantial emphasis.
The efficiency in the project was based on increased access to information by citizens; increased public sector cost efficiency and transparency; improvement in the quality of governmental services; reduction in transaction costs and time spent (for government, businesses, and citizens); increased contribution to GDP by the private sector in general and the IT industry in particular; ICT-enabled increases in productivity across government and industries; and an enhanced policy and legal environment. IT related exports increased from US$213 million in 2005 and are now in excess of US$720 million;
The establishment of the government wide intranet has enabled government agencies to access and share each other‘s information and data seamlessly, thereby substantially reducing government processing and transaction times and costs.
ICR assessment recognized that ICTA, as an institution, compares favorably in size vis-à-vis institutions with similar mandate, further enhancing the overall perspective of efficiency of the project. The staffing and costs levels stand up well to comparisons. At project end, ICTA had around 80 staff (country population 21 million). This compares favorably to the under implementation similar Bank ICT projects in both Rwanda (900-1,000 staff; for a country with a population of 11 million) and Moldova (29 staff; country population of 3.5 million).
Finally the ICR concluded that the e Sri Lanka project achieved its objectives and has successfully created the platform for NEXT LEVEL OF ICT DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY. ICR further indicated that ICTA has adequate capacity and is well placed to sustain progress made under the project; to carry forward ICT reforms and to provide effective citizen centered , business friendly government services, to empower the poor and disadvantaged groups through increased and affordable ICT tools and to develop ICT leadership.
Attachments: | https://www.icta.lk/world-bank-commends-icta-for-impressive-results-achieved-under-e-sri-lanka-development-project/ |
What impact will OECD accession have on Colombia?
ÁNGEL GURRÍA: OECD accession will benefit Colombia’s reputation and help boost investor confidence by clearly signalling that this is a country that observes the highest global standards, a commitment to pluralist democracy, open and transparent markets and a goal of sustainable development. Joining the OECD demonstrates to investors that Colombia follows key standards in areas such as corporate governance, investment, competition, financial markets and public administration.
Although Colombia’s business environment has improved, some challenges remain. The regulatory burden is heavy, and there is room to boost competition and to facilitate entry. The OECD’s best practices in this area can help substantially and Colombia has already started to take advantage of them. For example, during the accession process, Colombia started to undertake impact assessments of some of its new regulations. Other best practices that could be useful for Colombia include one-stop shop mechanisms, which have benefitted other OECD countries, such as Mexico.
How can corruption and informality be reduced?
GURRÍA: Colombia has made good progress in fighting corruption in recent years. The creation of a National Directorate for Prosecution against Corruption, the reinforced independence of the Superintendence of Companies, the new General Integrity Code, and the Transparency and Access to Public Information Law are all big steps in the right direction. Stronger legislation to fight foreign bribery, leading to the first ever sanctioning of a Colombian company, is also a good sign, though there is room for improvement. The current priorities for Colombia should be to pass whistleblower protection legislation, reinforce electoral accountability, strengthen the financial intelligence unit, and extend local and regional anti-corruption efforts.
The recent tax reform includes a number of important measures to tackle fraud and evasion, both domestically and abroad. Colombia needs to consider how best to use technology to analyse the increased amount of data now available to tax authorities, thanks to the implementation of the OECD’s transparency standards. This information can be used to help uncover under-reporting, evasion or fraud, as well as to minimise the compliance burden through automated processes.
Colombia can also do more to prevent labour informality, which is still widespread. Almost 60% of employed people aged 15-64 work informally and without social security coverage. Progress can be made in this area by promoting skills development, reducing non-wage labour costs, reviewing the minimum wage to promote job creation and strengthening the link between social security contributions and benefits.
How would you assess Colombia’s current diversification policies, and what more could be achieved?
GURRÍA: Boosting and broadening growth is a key economic goal. Fiscal revenues and exports remain highly dependent on oil prices, leaving Colombia exposed to unpredictable shocks. Exposure to trade is also low, with exports accounting for less than 15% of GDP and participation in global value chains very limited. Colombia has solid foundations to explore new export opportunities beyond extractive activities, such as in agriculture and services. Raising productivity is vital, particularly for medium-sized enterprises.
Progress to boost productivity and broaden growth has been achieved recently, as in the increased use of 4G. Further efforts are needed to improve infrastructure, such as secondary and tertiary roads in rural areas, as well as to improve logistics services, which contribute to high costs for trade and hamper the competitiveness of Colombian firms. Facilitating entry and competition in key sectors, such as transport, would be particularly useful. Colombia’s educational outcomes have improved over time, supporting productivity, but there is still potential to better align skills to labour market needs.
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In a statement released Tuesday, the SC Department of Commerce announced that, in recognition of the fact that “upgrades to water and sewer infrastructure can have significant environmental and economic benefits,” the Board of Directors of the S.C. Rural Infrastructure Authority (RIA) has awarded more than $13 million in grant funds for water, sewer and drainage projects. With those awards, the press release states that the RIA has awarded a total of approximately $24 million in grants to of 61 projects in fiscal 2017.
The press release states that the projects will have a dual impact on the communities in which they will be made, beginning with improvements to collection and distribution lines, storage tanks, pump stations and treatment plants. In addition, those projects will impact more than 50,000 residential customers and 6,000 businesses by ensuring safe drinking water, providing reliability for area businesses, and boosting economic opportunities.
The press release further states that many water and sewer utilities are faced with aging infrastructure in need of constant rehabilitation and repair. This not only results in disruptions in service, but also serves as a reminder that upgrades are needed to ensure that all customers are provided with modern and efficient infrastructure.
Now in its fifth year of funding, the RIA supports such efforts through its statewide financing programs.
City of Union Utility Director Joe Nichols said the grant will be used to fund the construction of a 12-inch water line that will serve both the H. Mac Johnson and Union Commerce industrial parks between US 176 and SC 18. Nichols said the line, which will be 1,500 feet in length, will provide additional water reliability and redundancy for the parks that will help facilitate economic development. He said the construction of the new water line is related to the ongoing expansion of the Gestamp manufacturing facility that straddles both parks.
Nichols said that under the terms of the program, the grant can only be used to cover the cost of construction. He said the city will pay for the engineering costs associated with the project plus any additional cost of construction if the project exceeds the grant amount.
An international manufacturer of metal automotive components, Gestamp is expanding its Union County facility to meet increased demand from local automotive original equipment manufacturers. The project is expected to bring $129 million in new capital investment and lead to the creation of 130 jobs in the Union County.
Designed to serve the existing BMW and Volvo Cars operations in South Carolina, the Gestamp facility is located at One LSP Road between the H. Mac Johnson and Union Commerce industrial parks. The expansion involves the addition of more than 300,000 square feet to its current facility including the construction of 123,000 square feet of new space and the addition of another 182,000 square feet by leasing an existing building.
Hiring for the new positions is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2018, and those interested in applying should contact [email protected]. For more information on the company, visit www.gestamp.com.
RIA grants are awarded twice a year through a competitive process that considers the need for improved public health, environmental protection, community sustainability and economic development. Applicants are required to match the RIA funding request. Applications are selected by the RIA board based on criteria, including: severity of the problem, expected impact and project feasibility.
The S.C. Rural Infrastructure Authority (RIA) was created to help communities with financing for qualified infrastructure projects. Infrastructure refers to water and waste water systems as well as storm water drainage and other public facilities.Chaired by the Secretary of Commerce, the RIA is governed by a board of directors, including six members who reside in or represent distressed and/or least developed counties.
As South Carolina’s leading economic development agency, the Department of Commerce works to recruit new businesses and help existing business grow. Commerce has recruited world-class companies to South Carolina such as BMW, Boeing, Continental, Giti Tire, LPL Financial Holdings, Mercedes-Benz Vans, Toray and Volvo Cars and also supports startups, small and existing business, innovation and rural development initiatives. Commerce partners with the S.C. Technical College System via readySC to support workforce training and recruiting, and with the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce, which provides worker training and employment opportunities within the state. In three of five years, IBM-Plant Location International reports ranked South Carolina first in the nation for attracting jobs through foreign investment, per capita. The state won the Gold Shovel Award and the Project of Year Award from Area Development magazine in 2012, 2014 and 2015. For more information, visit www.SCcommerce.com. | http://catawbacog.org/featured-news/union-receives-159000-grant-for-water-project/ |
In another post, we covered the nuts and bolts of Stochastic Gradient Descent and how to address problems like getting stuck in a local minima or a saddle point. In this post, we take a look at another problem that plagues training of neural networks, pathological curvature.
While local minima and saddle points can stall our training, pathological curvature can slow down training to an extent that the machine learning practitioner might think that search has converged to a sub-optimal minma. Let us understand in depth what pathological curvature is.
Consider the following loss contour.
You see, we start off randomly before getting into the ravine-like region marked by blue color. The colors actually represent how high the value the loss function is at a particular point, with reds representing highest values and blues representing the lowest values.
We want to get down to the minima, but for that we have move through the ravine. This region is what is called pathological curvature. To understand why it's called pathological , let us delve deeper. This is how pathological curvature, zoomed up, looks like..
It's not very hard to get hang of what is going on in here. Gradient descent is bouncing along the ridges of the ravine, and moving a lot slower towards the minima. This is because the surface at the ridge curves much more steeply in the direction of w1.
Consider a point A, on the surface of the ridge. We see, the gradient at the point can be decomposed into two components, one along direction w1 and other along w2. The component of the gradient in direction of w1 is much larger because of the curvature of the loss function, and hence the direction of the gradient is much more towards w1, and not towards w2 (along which the minima lies).
Normally, we could use a slow learning rate to deal with this bouncing between the ridges problem as we covered in the last post on gradient descent. However, this spells trouble.
It makes sense to slow down when were are nearing a minima, and we want to converge into it. But consider the point where gradient descent enters the region of pathological curvature, and the sheer distance to go until the minima. If we use a slower learning rate, it might take so too much time to get to the minima. In fact, one paper reports that learning rates small enough to prevent bouncing around the ridges might lead the practitioner to believe that the loss isn't improving at all, and abandon training all together.
Probably we want something that can get us slowly into the flat region at the bottom of pathological curvature first, and then accelerate in the direction of minima. Second derivatives can help us do that.
Gradient descent is a First Order Optimization Method. It only takes the first order derivatives of the loss function into account and not the higher ones. What this basically means it has no clue about the curvature of the loss function. It can tell whether the loss is declining and how fast, but cannot differentiate between whether the curve is a plane, curving upwards or curving downwards.
This happens because gradient descent only cares about the gradient, which is the same at the red point for all of the three curves above. The solution? Take into account double derivative, or the rate of how quickly the gradient is changing.
A very popular technique that can use second order derivatives to fix our issue is called the Newton's Method. For sake of not straying away from the topic of post, I won't delve much into the math of Newton's method. What I'll do instead is try to build an intuition of what Newton's Method does.
Newton's method can give us an ideal step size to move in the direction of the gradient. Since we now have information about the curvature of our loss surface, the step size can be accordingly chosen to not overshoot the floor of the region with pathological curvature.
Newton's Method does it by computing the Hessian Matrix, which is a matrix of the double derivatives of the loss function with respect of all combinations of the weights. What I mean by saying a combination of the weights, is something like this.
A Hessian Matrix then accumulates all these gradients in one large big matrix.
The Hessian gives us an estimate of the curvature of loss surface at a point. A loss surface can have a positive curvature which means the surface, which means a surface is rapidly getting less steeper as we move. If we have a negative curvature, it means that the surface is getting more steeper as we move.
Notice, if this step is negative, it means we can use a arbitrary step. In other words, we can just switch back to our original algorithm. This corresponds to the following case where the gradient is getting more steeper.
However if the gradient is getting less steeper, we might be heading towards a region at the bottom of pathological curvature. Here, Newton's algorithm gives us a revised learning step, which is, as you can see is inversely proportional to the curvature, or how quickly the surface is getting less steeper.
If the surface is getting less steeper, then the learning step is decreased.
So why don't we use Newton's algorithm more often?
You see that Hessian Matrix in the formula? That hessian requires you to compute gradients of the loss function with respect to every combination of weights. If you know your combinations, that value is of the order of the square of the number of weights present in the neural network.
For modern day architectures, the number of parameters may be in billions, and calculating a billion squared gradients makes it computationally intractable for us to use higher order optimization methods.
However, here's an idea. Second order optimization is about incorporating the information about how is the gradient changing itself. Though we cannot precisely compute this information, we can chose to follow heuristics that guide our search for optima based upon the past behavior of gradient.
A very popular technique that is used along with SGD is called Momentum. Instead of using only the gradient of the current step to guide the search, momentum also accumulates the gradient of the past steps to determine the direction to go. The equations of gradient descent are revised as follows.
The first equations has two parts. The first term is the gradient that is retained from previous iterations. This retained gradient is multiplied by a value called "Coefficient of Momentum" which is the percentage of the gradient retained every iteration.
If we set the initial value for v to 0 and chose our coefficient as 0.9, the subsequent update equations would look like.
How does this help our case. Consider the image,and notice that most of the gradient updates are in a zig-zag direction. Also notice that each gradient update has been resolved into components along w1 and w2 directions. If we will individually sum these vectors up, their components along the direction w1 cancel out, while the component along the w2 direction is reinforced.
For an update, this adds to the component along w2, while zeroing out the component in w1 direction. This helps us move more quickly towards the minima. For this reason, momentum is also referred to as a technique which dampens oscillations in our search.
It also builds speed, and quickens convergence, but you may want to use simulated annealing in case you overshoot the minima.
In practice, the coefficient of momentum is initialized at 0.5, and gradually annealed to 0.9 over multiple epochs.
RMSprop, or Root Mean Square Propogation has an interesting history. It was devised by the legendary Geoffrey Hinton, while suggesting a random idea during a Coursera class.
RMSProp also tries to dampen the oscillations, but in a different way than momentum. RMS prop also takes away the need to adjust learning rate, and does it automatically. More so, RMSProp choses a different learning rate for each parameter.
In RMS prop, each update is done according to the equations described below. This update is done separately for each parameter.
So, let's break down what is happening here.
In the first equation, we compute an exponential average of the square of the gradient. Since we do it separately for each parameter, gradient Gt here corresponds to the projection, or component of the gradient along the direction represented by the parameter we are updating.
To do that, we multiply the exponential average computed till the last update with a hyperparameter, represented by the greek symbol nu. We then multiply the square of the current gradient with (1 - nu). We then add them together to get the exponential average till the current time step.
Notice our diagram denoting pathological curvature, the components of the gradients along w1 are much larger than the ones along w2. Since we are squaring and adding them, they don't cancel out, and the exponential average is large for w2 updates.
Then in the second equation, we decided our step size. We move in the direction of the gradient, but our step size is affected by the exponential average. We chose an initial learning rate eta, and then divide it by the average. In our case, since the average of w1 is much much larger than w2, the learning step for w1 is much lesser than that of w2. Hence, this will help us avoid bouncing between the ridges, and move towards the minima.
The third equation is just the update step. The hyperparameter p is generally chosen to be 0.9, but you might have to tune it. The epsilon is equation 2, is to ensure that we do not end up dividing by zero, and is generally chosen to be 1e-10.
So far, we've seen RMSProp and Momentum take contrasting approaches. While momentum accelerates our search in direction of minima, RMSProp impedes our search in direction of oscillations.
Adam or Adaptive Moment Optimization algorithms combines the heuristics of both Momentum and RMSProp. Here are the update equations.
Here, we compute the exponential average of the gradient as well as the squares of the gradient for each parameters (Eq 1, and Eq 2). To decide our learning step, we multiply our learning rate by average of the gradient (as was the case with momentum) and divide it by the root mean square of the exponential average of square of gradients (as was the case with momentum) in equation 3. Then, we add the update.
The hyperparameter beta1 is generally kept around 0.9 while beta_2 is kept at 0.99. Epsilon is chosen to be 1e-10 generally.
In this post, we have seen 3 methods to build upon gradient descent to combat the problem of pathological curvature, and speed up search at the same time. These methods are often called "Adaptive Methods" since the learning step is adapted according to the topology of the contour.
Out of the above three, you may find momentum to be the most prevalent, despite Adam looking the most promising on paper. Empirical results have shown the all these algorithms can converge to different optimal local minima given the same loss. However, SGD with momentum seems to find more flatter minima than Adam, while adaptive methods tend to converge quickly towards sharper minima. Flatter minima generalize better than sharper ones.
Despite the fact that adaptive methods help us tame the unruly contours of a loss function of a deep net's loss function, they are not enough, especially with networks becoming deeper and deeper everyday. Along with choosing better optimization methods, considerable research is being put in coming up with architectures that produce smoother loss functions to start with. Batch Normalization and Residual Connections are a part of that effort, and we'll try to do a detailed blog post on them very shortly. But that's it for this post. Feel free to ask questions in the comments. | https://blog.paperspace.com/intro-to-optimization-momentum-rmsprop-adam/ |
Hi,
Let Y1 and Y2 be independent random variables with Y1 ~ Norm(1, 3) and Y2 ~ Norm(2, 5). If W1 = Y1 + Y2 and W2 = 4Y1 - Y2 what is the joint distribution of W1 and W2?
I see how the mean vector is simply the variables' means, and I see the diagonal of the covariance matrix is just the variance, but according to the solution the off diagonal, which is the covariance between W1 and W2, right?, should be 2. I dont see how this can be computed without the correlation coefficient, p?
Overall the covariance matrix is [23, 2; 2, 53]. | http://mathhelpforum.com/advanced-statistics/186322-covariance-matrix-two-independent-variables.html |
W1: Hi. My name is Maggie. My kids are the three in red shirts –helps me keep track of them.
W2: (Smiles) I’m Patty. Mine are in the pink and yellow shirts. Do you come here a lot?
W2: Wow! Where do you find the time?
W1: We homeschool, so we do it during the day most of the time.
W2: It’s not easy. I go to all the PTO meetings and work with the kids every day after school and stay real involved.
W1: But what about socialization? Aren’t you worried about them being cooped up all day with kids their own ages, never getting the opportunity for natural relationships?
W2: Well, yes. But I work hard to balance that. They have some friends who’re homeschooled, and we visit their grandparents almost every month.
W1: Sounds like you’re a very dedicated mom. But don’t you worry about all the opportunities they’re missing out on? I mean they’re so isolated from real life — how will they know what the world is like — what people do to make a living — how to get along with all different kinds of people?
W2: Oh, we discussed that at PTO, and we started a fund to bring real people into the classrooms. Last month, we had a policeman and a doctor come in to talk to every class. And next month, we’re having a woman from Japan and a man from Kenya come to speak.
W2: That’s nice. Hmm. Maybe we should plan some Japanese food for the lunchroom on Multicultural Day.
W2: Oh, no. She’s on a very tight schedule. She has two other schools to visit that day. It’s a system wide thing we’re doing.
W1: Oh, I’m sorry. Well, maybe you’ll meet someone interesting in the grocery store sometime and you’ll end up having them over for dinner.
W2: I don’t think so. I never talk to people in the store –certainly not people who might not even speak my language. What if that Japanese man hadn’t spoken English?
W1: I was right there with him. He knows that as long as he’s with me, he can talk to anyone he wishes.
W2: But you’re developing dangerous habits in him. My children never talk to strangers.
W1: Not even when they’re with you?
W2: They’re never with me, except at home after school. So you see why it’s so important for them to understand that talking to strangers is a big no-no.
W1: Yes, I do. But if they were with you, they could get to meet interesting people and still be safe. They’d get a taste of the real world, in real settings. They’d also get a real feel for how to tell when a situation is dangerous or suspicious.
W2: They’ll get that in the third and fifth grades in their health courses.
W1: Well, I can tell you’re a very caring mom. Let me give you my number–if you ever want to talk, give me call. It was good to meet you.
Brilliant! Thanks for posting this. | http://hef.org.nz/2012/two-women-meet-at-a-playground/ |
Tweeting with Markov Chains
I'm not sure why I find this so surprising, but it's a somewhat trivial task to write a program that can spew out somewhat coherent sentences, as long as you have a large corpus to work off.
Markov Chains
Markov Chains are essentially state machines with probabilities assigned to each of it's state transitions.
For example, using the Markov Chain shown above, if it were sunny today, there would be a 70% chance it would be rainy tomorrow, and a 30% chance it would still be sunny. If one were to continue to traverse the chain, they would get a sequence of weather patterns like:
'sunny', 'rainy', 'rainy', 'sunny', ...
If the probabilities were reasonable, the sequence of weather patterns should be reflect your 7-day weather forecast!
The Bot
We can apply this same methodology to generate some tweets! First we need some source material. I had scraped around 110,000 game reviews off Metacritic for another project I was working on.
First we need to split up our corpus into individual tokens. We could split it up at several granularities, like per-character, per-word, or even per-sentence. As with most things, there's a trade-off on both ends. Tokenize by character, and it's you'll get nonsensical gibberish. If you split by sentence, you're essentially just chaining together pieces from your source material. Let's try at the word level for now:
""" Using NLTK for convenience. You can use split() ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ """ tokenizer = nltk.tokenize.RegexpTokenizer(r'\w+|[^\w\s]+') tokenized_content = tokenizer.tokenize(review_file.read())
Now that we've tokenized our corpus, we need to make a decision on how we wan't to represent each state. We can use a single word/token as the state:
to, be, or, not, to, be, …
We can make it a bit more complex and do each pair of words:
to be, be or, or not, not to, to be, …
And pushing it even further, triples:
to be or, be or not, or not to, not to be, …
The technical term for this grouping of tokens is n-grams. Picking the correct n will impact the performance of your model. Pick an extremely large n, and your model will be very biased towards certain sequences. Pick too small an n and your model will spew out crap, since there's so much variability. Tri-grams are usually a good bet for decent sized corpuses, but for smaller ones bi-grams perform better.
Now that we've decided on what the states will look like in our Markov Chain, how do we go about representing it in a data structure? One simple way is to use a Hash Table/Dictionary where the keys are states in the Markov Chain, and the key's value are the possible transitions, represented by an array of keys (which assumes that each transistion has a uniform probability.
def train(self): for w1, w2, w3 in self.triplets(tokenized_content): key = (w1, w2) if key in self.model: self.model[key].append(w3) else: self.model[key] = [w3]
Now that we have our Markov Chain ready to go, we'll just need to start off at some random state, and traverse the chain to generate some tweets!
def generate_tweet(self): w1, w2 = random.choice(self.model.keys()) gen_words = tweet_length = 0 while tweet_length <= 100: gen_words.append(w1) tweet_length += len(w1) + 1 w1, w2 = w2, random.choice(self.model[(w1, w2)]) gen_words.append('#GameReview') return reduce(self.join_tokens, gen_words)
The resulting tweets: | https://ben-yu.com/markov-models/ |
Rheumatoid arthritis is a complex disease caused by a combination of genetic, environmental, and hormonal factors, and their additive and/or non-additive effects. We performed a linkage analysis to provide evidence of rheumatoid factor IgM on linkage, based on Bayesian variable selection coupled with the new Haseman-Elston method. For statistical inferences to estimate unknown parameters, we utilized the perfect sampling algorithm, an emerging simulation technique that alleviates concerns over convergence and sampling mixing. Our methods provide powerful and conceptually simple approaches to simultaneous genome scans of main effects and all possible pairwise interactions. We apply them to the Genetic Analysis Workshop 15 data (Problem 2) provided by the North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium (NARAC).
Keywords
- Markov Chain Monte Carlo
- Genetic Analysis Workshop
- Bayesian Model Selection
- Bayesian Variable Selection
- Perfect Sampling
Background
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a clinically heterogeneous disorder with variability in severity, disease course, and response to therapy. Although the exact cause of rheumatoid arthritis is still unknown, RA is known to be a complex disease caused by a combination of genetic, environmental, and hormonal factors, and their additive and/or non-additive effects (epistases or gene × environment interactions). Genetic risk factors not only determine susceptibility for the disease but also correlate with disease severity and phenotype. Among phenotypes, rheumatoid factor IgM is a significant and common measure for diagnosis of RA. Therefore, genetic linkage analyses of IgM levels may reveal major differences in chromosomal regions showing evidence for linkage.
While recent interest has been focused on genome scans using a large number of marker loci, the common approaches of existing statistical methods produce often inconsistent results. This is due in part to the fact that they test markers one after another and fail to capture the substantial information of epistases among disease loci. The use of Bayesian model selection has been the popular method of remedying the pitfalls of conventional methods in recent years, whereby identifying loci with significant effects is viewed as a model selection problem. Unlike conventional methods suggesting a single best model, Bayesian methods consider multiple possible models along with their probabilities to incorporate model uncertainty. One of the powerful Bayesian model selection approaches is the use of stochastic search variable selection (SSVS) [1–4], in which Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms are used to sample from the posterior distributions, thus making identification of promising subsets even for many candidate variables (markers) feasible.
Although Bayesian approaches with MCMC techniques have made intensive computations possible and efficient on large-scale data sets arising in modern genomic and genetic applications, an application of Bayesian model selection is still quite challenging and limited from both a computational standpoint as well as the sensitivity to the choice of prior distributions. The usage of MCMC has been often controversial due to the uncertainty of convergence and the dependence on starting positions. In addition, the samples obtained by MCMC are correlated, which can drastically reduce the efficiency of the approaches. These drawbacks of MCMC, however, can be overcome by perfect sampling, which was first proposed by Propp and Wilson under the name of coupling from the past (CFTP). Perfect sampling uses a scheme of coupling chains in order to guarantee that samples are exactly from the target distribution of interest. The basic idea is to run coupled chains that start from all initial states from the past time -T and run them to time 0, in which at any instant of time t ∈ [-T, 0), the same random seed and an updating function are applied to all possible chains. Once all the chains meet (coalesce), from this time onward, due to the common random seed and an updating function, they follow the same path, and at a time 0 they arrive at the same state, which is then an exact sample from the posterior distribution. Therefore, this procedure guarantees that the effect of initial states wears off, yielding an exact sample regardless of starting values. Although perfect sampling suggests the ideal approach to draw an exact sample, the framework of running chains from all possible states is almost infeasible because of the large number of markers involved.
Motivated by Huang and Djuric , we propose an efficient implementation of perfect sampling for high-dimensional data. Then, coupled with the new Haseman-Elston method , we carry out screening to identify susceptibility alleles that are more closely linked to rheumatoid factor IgM. We further evaluate their possible epistases. Most existing methods adopt a two-stage procedure to screen epistases, in which epistases are only considered for previously selected markers with significant main effects, and thereby they are bound to miss important loci whose effects influence a trait primarily through epistasis. In contrast, we perform an efficient simultaneous screening both on main effects and epistases. Our methods can handle large problems involving up to thousands of markers without any strict conditions in a reasonable running time. We apply these methods to the RA data of Genetic Analysis Workshop 15 (GAW15) (Problem 2).
Methods
Haseman-Elston method
The simple regression method of the Haseman-Elston offers an effective framework for studying linkage between markers and disease. Later, Elston et al. proposed modifications to the original Haseman-Elston method to improve its power. It is based on regression of the squared sum of mean-centered trait values, CP j = (Y1j- m)(Y2j- m), with mean m on the estimated proportion of alleles shared identically by decent (IBD) by the sibling pair, Y1j, Y2j.
The model and prior specifications
where μ is the mean, y j is an observed phenotypic value (CP j ) for each sibling pair, x ij is a proportion of IBD for ith marker in jth sample, and β i is an effect of the ith marker. The variance of the trait is assumed to be ε ~ N(0, φ-1I), with φ being a precision parameter. To explore promising subsets (a set of markers having evidence of linkage) over the entire model space efficiently, a binary indicator γ i is used to represent an exclusion or inclusion of ith marker in the model . Then a model is represented by γ = (γ1,..., γ p ) and Eq. (1) can be reduced to the p γ = I p γ variables by ignoring columns of X for which γ i = 0. We denote the corresponding model as X γ and coefficient parameters as β γ . When epistases are considered, the indicator vector γ is expressed as γ = (γ1,..., γ p , γ(1, 2),..., γ(i, j),..., γ(p, p-1)), where γ(i, j) is an indicator of an epistasis of ith and jth markers and Eq. (1) is extended by adding for an epistatic effect, between loci j1 and j2 ≤ p. Therefore, a general model to describe both main effects and epistases can be written Y = μ + X γ β γ + ε, where some of the columns of X γ are formed from the original variables by multiplication of columns of X to build the design matrix for epistases and β γ = [β1,..., β2, β1, 2,..., βp-1, p].
where c is an unknown positive scalar.
Posterior inference
When there are a large number of markers involved, Eq. (2) is estimated via MCMC algorithms by simulating samples from the posterior distribution without knowing the normalizing constant, but at a risk of false inferences and being subject to initialization biases. We use perfect sampling described as follows.
Posterior simulation via perfect sampling
where γ(-i) = (γ1,...., γi-1, γi+1,..., γ p ) and γ(i) = (γ1,...., γi-1, 1, γi+1,..., γ p ). There are 2p-1 possible configurations of Eq. (3). The original perfect sampling method, CFTP , entails running parallel chains from every possible 2p-1 state from the past time -T to 0 repeatedly until it achieves coalescence. However, our approaches do not require running all these chains based on two following ideas.
Coalescence is achieved when all supports become settled at time 0, i.e., || = 0 for all i. This procedure in implemented iteratively as follows. At T = -1, for each ∈ S t , we decide two sandwich distributions and update S0 based on Eq. (5). If the coalescence is achieved, a support S0 is reported as a draw from the target posterior in Eq. (2). Otherwise, we move back at T = -2 and repeat updating for t ∈ [-2, 0], and then check coalescence at 0. The whole procedure is repeated, and a sample is drawn only if coalescence occurs at 0. Otherwise, the starting time is shifted further back, preferably at -2T and the updates perform by reusing the same random seed, which is critical to preclude the space from growing . One of the main keys in our methods is to construct two bounds, and . We have recently proposed how to build these bounds, approximately to succeed the perfect sampling even for high dimensional spaces. The manuscript may be obtained upon request.
Model space prior for epsitases
This dependent relationship can be advantageous in that we can reduce the size of the model space by limiting certain epistases to be included in the model. For example, if we believe that an epistasis should be considered only if at least one of the main effects is significant, we let w00 = 0. However, because we might miss important marker loci that might affect a phenotype primarily through epistasis, it may be more reasonable to have 0 ≤ w00 ≤ w01 ≤ w11 ≤ 0.5. The hyper-priors, (w1, w2) in Eq. (6) and (w11, w01, w00) in Eq. (7), can indirectly control the expected numbers of effects in the model. Therefore, small values are essential because we expect there are a small number of markers linked to the trait.
Selection criterion
After we collect samples using perfect sampling, the identification of markers that are tightly linked to the genes is given by estimates of marginal posterior probabilities. To this end, we simply count the relative frequencies of model visits in the samples, and the marginal posterior of the ith marker being important is estimated by summing over the posterior of models containing this marker. Then, we list the estimates of marginal posterior probabilities in a numerical order. Their patterns are used to gauge the importance of effects. When the decision is made, the model space prior (w1, w2) in Eq. (6) and (w11, w01, w00) in Eq. (7) play an important role as threshold values. If the marginal posterior probability of the marker is higher than these values, we decide that the corresponding effect of this marker is significant.
Data
We used rheumatoid factor IgM as the quantitative trait values and microsatellite scans for 511 multiplex families over the 22 autosomal chromosomes. The IBD values were obtained using the statistical software MERLIN . A total of 590 independent sib pairs and 407 microsatellite markers were used in the analysis.
Our programs were written in MATLAB and each was run on Super Macintosh G5 with a 2.66 GHz quad-processor.
Results
Choice of hyper-parameters
Before we ran perfect sampling, we had to decide hyper-parameters (c, w1) under a non-epistatic model, and (c, w1, w2) in Eq. (6) or (c, w11, w01, w00) in Eq. (7) under an epistatic model. To specify these values, rescaling and sensitivity analysis may be advisable. We checked the sensitivity of our methods toward the choice of c by re-running our algorithms for several values of c between 1 and 10. The results were not sensitive (data not shown). Choosing (w1, w2) and (w11, w01, w00) in the model space prior is rather straightforward. A smaller value should provide smaller estimates of marginal posteriors, but our results were robust to these values since we took them as threshold values to select important effects. Therefore, in this paper, we only reported the results by fixing (c, w1) = (5, 0.01) for a non-epistatic model and (c, w1, w2) = (5, 0.01, 0.01) in Eq. (6) and (c, w11, w10, w00) = (5, 0.01, 0.01, 0.005) in Eq. (7) for an epistatic model for comparison.
Main effects
Total effects (main and interaction effects)
Conclusion
We have applied Bayesian variable selection via perfect sampling to the RA data of GAW15 to identify markers linked to rheumatoid factor IgM. Our methods can accommodate a large number of markers, permit epistatic effects to be considered in the models, and evaluate all effects simultaneously. Therefore, they have significant advantages over the classic approaches. As opposed to other Bayesian methods, our methods do not require any tunings relating to convergence issues of MCMC techniques and there is no dependence on initial values. Therefore, they are reliable even from a small number of drawn samples.
Our analyses have revealed that there is a strong evidence for main effects on chromosome 6, and also marginal evidence for epistases between chromosomes 6 and 16, 6 and 19, and 6 and 21. To increase the accuracy, we may collect more samples.
Declarations
Acknowledgements
This article has been published as part of BMC Proceedings Volume 1 Supplement 1, 2007: Genetic Analysis Workshop 15: Gene Expression Analysis and Approaches to Detecting Multiple Functional Loci. The full contents of the supplement are available online at http://0-www.biomedcentral.com.brum.beds.ac.uk/1753-6561/1?issue=S1.
Authors’ Affiliations
References
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- Huang Y, Djuric PM: Variable selection by perfect sampling. EURASIP J Applied Signal Proc. 2002, 1: 38-45. 10.1155/S1110865702000409.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
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Copyright
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | https://0-bmcproc-biomedcentral-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/articles/10.1186/1753-6561-1-S1-S110 |
A portfolio manager adds a new stock that has the same standard deviation of returns as the existing portfolio but has a correlation coefficient with the existing portfolio that is less than +1. Adding this stock will have what effect on the standard deviation of the revised portfolio’s returns? The standard deviation will: A) increase. B) decrease. C) remain unchanged. D) decrease only if the correlation is negative. *************************************************** the answer is B. As given in the question the co-relation coefficient is less than +1 then why would it always decrease the new overall SD of the portfolio. I think the new SD can increase or decrease if correlation coeff is non-negative and will always decrease if correlation coeff is negative. Please help!!
but how could stdev increase in this situation? this question illustrates the point of portfolio diversification. As long as the new asset (with the same sdev) is not 100% correlated with the portfolio then adding it will decrease the portfolio’s variance. Just think about the equation for a two assets portfolio: SP^2 = w1^2 S1^2 + w2^2 S2^2 + 2 W1 W2 rho S1 S2 as long as rho is anything less then +1 the portfolio variance will decrease since the asset’s sdev is equal (or even less) then the portfolio’s stdev
Agreed, the key is that the new stock has the SAME std deviation as the existing portfolio but is not perfectly correlated (less than +1) with it, resulting in diversification benefits. | https://www.analystforum.com/t/portoflio-problem-from-qbank/6422 |
Use the result of Exercise 6.3-10.
(a) Find the joint pdf of Y1 and Yn, the first and the nth order statistics of a random sample of size n from the U(0, 1) distribution.
(b) Find the joint and the marginal pdfs of W1 = Y1/Yn and W2 = Yn.
(c) Are W1 and W2 independent?
(d) Use simulation to confirm your theoretical results.
Reference Exercise 6.3-10
Use the heuristic argument to show that the joint pdf of the two order statistics Yi < Yj is
Chapter 3 & 12 4/20/2017 in-class notes Chapter 3: measures of linear association between two quantitative variables (covariance and correlation coefficient) Correlation Changes (increase/decrease) in values of variables x are associated with (are accompanied by) changes in the values of y (and vice versa) Often we are interested... | https://studysoup.com/tsg/23077/probability-and-statistical-inference-9-edition-chapter-6-3-problem-11e |
Response to peers third comments
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Response three: Interprofessional collaboration is when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds work together with patients, families, carers and communities to deliver the highest quality of care. It is based on the concept that when providers consider each other’s perspective, including that of the patient, they can deliver better care. By collaborating and involving everyone that is apart of the patient care, different departments knows what is going on with the patient, it will reduce errors, improve the quality of care and provide safety. Communication is sometimes poor in healthcare, this can cause harm to patients, by promoting interprofessional collaboration, coordination of care across the continuum of healthcare in all settings. Working as a team, the patient’s care is coordinated throughout the healthcare continuum. This promotes sharing of knowledge and working toward a common goal where each professional learns about each other’s roles and responsibilities from each other. These ensure better communication with less chance of error, whether a patient is being transferred from surgery to the intensive care unit or from an acute care setting to a long-term facility.
The traditional culture of healthcare training and practice has been to work by themselves and without a team. Doctors are not used to working collaboratively across disciplines. Study has shown that some hospital nurses and physicians caring for the same patients often could not identify each other and often had different priorities for them, suggesting that there is no coordination of care. Some cultural barriers exist, there is little exposure to each other’s role and perspective. This may foster miscommunication, mistrust, conflict, and a lack of coordinated care. Second, physicians historically have been autonomous and dominant of other health professions, rather than collaborative. Third, patients themselves have traditionally not been a part of the decision making related to their care, there is resistance to change, as health professionals may need more education and training in adopting the new trend.
REFERENCE
US National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health. Retrieved from,
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The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)-convened National Steering Committee for Patient Safety (NSC) has released a National Action Plan intended to provide US health systems with renewed momentum and clearer direction for eliminating preventable medical harm.
Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety draws from evidence-based practices, widely known and effective interventions, exemplar case examples and newer innovations. The plan is the work of 27 influential federal agencies, safety organisations and experts, and patient and family advocates.
The plan provides clear direction that health care leaders, delivery organisations, and associations can use to make significant advances toward safer care and reduced harm across the continuum of care.
Content
The National Action Plan centres on four foundational and interdependent areas, prioritised as essential to create total systems safety, with 17 recommendations to advance patient safety.
Culture, Leadership, and Governance
1. Ensure safety is a demonstrated core value.
2. Assess capabilities and commit resources to advance safety.
3. Widely share information about safety to promote transparency.
4. Implement competency-based governance and leadership.
Patient and family engagement
5. Establish competencies for all healthcare professionals for the engagement of patients, families, and care partners.
6. Engage patients, families, and care partners in the co-production of care.
7. Include patients, families, and care partners in leadership, governance, and safety and improvement efforts.
8. Ensure equitable engagement for all patients, families, and care partners.
9. Promote a culture of trust and respect for patients, families, and care partners.
Workforce safety
10. Implement a systems approach to workforce safety.
11. Assume accountability for physical and psychological safety and a healthy work environment that fosters the joy of the health care workforce.
12. Develop, resource, and execute on priority programmes that equitably foster workforce safety.
Learning system
13. Facilitate both intra- and inter-organisational learning.
14. Accelerate the development of the best possible safety learning networks.
15. Initiate and develop systems to facilitate interprofessional education and training on safety.
16. Develop shared goals for safety across the continuum of care.
17. Expedite industry-wide coordination, collaboration, and cooperation on safety. | https://www.pslhub.org/learn/organisations-linked-to-patient-safety-uk-and-beyond/international-patient-safety/ihi/institute-for-healthcare-improvement-safer-together-a-national-action-plan-to-advance-patient-safety-14-september-2020-r3019/ |
With 1.6 million people living in the border regions, the economic impact of Brexit will increase deprivation rates and isolation with consequent impact on the health of individuals in the border area.
Ahead of its presentation, the IMO said the biggest challenges posed by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU will be ensuring ongoing and future collaboration in the field of healthcare and ensuring timely and seamless access to care for patients in the border areas.
The Cooperation and Working Together (CAWT) partnership between health and social care services in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland facilitates a number of successful collaborative projects in healthcare in the border regions, managing funding from the EU INTERREG Programme, many of which have resulted in longer term service level agreements.
Other cross-border service level agreements exist as a result of collaboration and capital investment from both sides of the border. These include radiation oncology services and emergency cardiology services at Altnagelvin Hospital as well as the provision of all-island paediatric cardiac surgery services for children with congenital heart disease at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, Dublin.
An increasing number of patients have taken advantage of the patients’ rights in cross-border care regulations with 700 patients accessing care in Northern Ireland last year.
Currently, there are 3,196 doctors registered with the General Medical Council in the UK who received their primary medical degree in Ireland, while 742 doctors registered with the Medical Council in Ireland received their primary medical degree in the UK.
In its submission to the Committee, the IMO stressed that cross-border co-operation is also essential regarding emergency planning and response, particularly in the areas of control of outbreaks of infectious diseases, which may have a cross-border dimension.
Commenting ahead of the presentation, Dr Ann Hogan, President of the IMO, said: “Regardless of how hard or soft, a future border will be in place, impeding the free movement of patients, ambulances and doctors across the border. Common European regulations regarding pharmaceuticals, medical devices and data protection may no longer apply. Legislation which has aided the movement of healthcare professionals may no longer apply.
“In addition to the rights of doctors to work in both jurisdictions, the automatic recognition of medical qualifications will no longer apply. Bureaucracy will affect both the flow and training of medical professionals between both jurisdictions. We cannot be complacent and assume that cooperation will continue into the future once the UK has left the EU. Planning must begin immediately.”
Dr Hogan said, “There is already a crisis in manpower in the Irish health system and any fluctuation in this will adversely affect the situation.”
The IMO is recommending proactive and careful planning to ensure that collaboration in the area of healthcare continues and develops into the future and the establishment of a cross-border committee to examine the impact of Brexit on existing and future cross-border health services.
It also recommends that regulatory bodies in Ireland and the UK work closely together to ensure the recognition of qualifications and to facilitate the movement of medical and other healthcare professionals across jurisdictions avoiding duplication of legal requirements.
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You must be logged in to post a comment. | https://www.medicalindependent.ie/imo-warns-of-impact-of-brexit-on-health-services/ |
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Each year we work with our patients, staff and commissioners to agree a number of priorities for development.
The Trust has a Quality Strategy aimed at building high quality healthcare based on national and international comparisons and to improve our performance in three key domains:
Our vision for quality is to be:
Recognised as one of the UK's highest quality healthcare providers. All our clinical services will provide high quality healthcare; some will provide care that is internationally outstanding.
Our quality domains apply to all staff and departments. We strive for excellence in healthcare by encouraging a culture of support, respect, integrity and teamwork; by monitoring and assessing our performance against national and international standards of care; by learning from our successes and setbacks; by striving to improve what we do through innovation and change; and by ensuring we work in partnership and collaboration with all local agencies of health and social care.
Our Quality Strategy has also been informed by both staff and patients through a number of workshops. We need to understand not only what quality means to us as healthcare professionals, but also what matters to our members, patients and their families. All service areas have developed posters outlining their quality priorities specific to their patients' needs and these are displayed in service areas.
Our aim is to deliver continuous improvement at all levels in the quality of our services in the pursuit of the best patient-centred care.
We have always been committed to providing the highest standard of care and we listen to the views of our patients, our staff, our commissioners and other stakeholders to ensure we continue to deliver improvements.
Twice a year, we invite public and patients to tell us what matters to them to help inform our quality goals. Those attending highlight issues ranging from clinic appointment times to better communication and greater involvement in Trust service development.
Our Quality Priorities - Trust community gathers for a conversation - 23 January 2023
TB2023.27 Oxford University Hospitals NHS FT Proposed Quality Priorities 2023-24 (pdf)
For further information about our Quality Priorities, please see our Quality Accounts. | https://www.ouh.nhs.uk/about/quality-priorities/ |
Talk: Unnatural Language and Natural Thinking
I’m giving a talk on the University of Calgary campus (in SS 1015) on Friday December 2, 2016 at 3:15pm.
Title
Unnatural Language and Natural Thinking: Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
Abstract
Critics of computational text-analysis tend to perceive its focus on language patterns as a flattening of qualitative texts into quantifiable patterns. They’re right. But a text’s linguistic operating-system deserves close scrutiny when it reveals features of the text that a human reader can’t perceive, or when it flags evidence beyond our capacity to gather. The Augmented Criticism Lab has developed algorithms to detect features of repetition and variation in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries (starting with drama, namely the Folger’s Digital Anthology). We’ve begun with features like rhetorical figures that repeat lemmas (heed, heedful, heeding) or morphemes (heeding, wringing, vexing). We use natural-language processing to gather evidence of these unnatural formulations, to ask whether they signal natural habits of thought. The interpretive payoff is our ability to make more definitive arguments not just about these figures, but also about underlying cognitive habits.
This paper describes our process and our corpus, and presents a range of our results with this initial corpus before we expand to the billion words in the EEBO-TCP corpus (1473-1700).
For more information about the Augmented Criticism Lab, visit < acriticismlab.org >. | http://ullyot.ucalgaryblogs.ca/2016/11/23/talk-unnatural-language-and-natural-thinking/ |
You are using an old browser with security vulnerabilities and can not use the features of this website.
Language in social media is characterised by more formal (written) or more informal (spoken-like) style in different contexts, and thus shows high variability. We focus on one linguistic domain in Pragmatics, the management of common ground between writers and readers, and identify the consistent patterns of discourse strategies employed by writers across different groups and channels. We will develop computational models for the observed variability across individuals, groups, and social media channels supplementing a consistent core. The models test and if appropriate extend theories like Centering and Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. | https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/sfb1287/projects/cluster-a/project-a03.html |
January 15, 2004
The ICSI Meeting Corpus has now been released by the Linguistic Data Consortium. This corpus, which consists of 75 natural meetings recorded at ICSI from 2000 to 2002, was created with the intention of providing spontaneous multi-party speech data for use in development of speech recognition technology. Speech researchers at ICSI and many other sites (including our colleagues at IDIAP who are working on related material) are interested in developing technology capable of accurately transcribing multi-party meetings, and defiving higher-level information such as summaries from the meetings. The release of the Meeting Corpus marks the completion of the first stage of this kind of research.
For more information on the Meeting Corpus you can visit the LDC website.
January 15, 2004
AnnaLee Saxenian, an ICSI faculty associate, has been appointed dean of UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems. The full story is online here. >>
January 9, 2004
Liz Shriberg, a senior researcher at ICSI, was quoted on January 3, 2004 in a New York Times article about disfluencies in speech. She was subsequently interviewed live on the radio talk show "Adler On Line" with Charles Adler of CJOB 68 Radio in Winnipeg, Canada, on Friday, January 9.
January 5, 2004
Richard Karp, leader of ICSI's Algorithms Group, will be presented with the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science for his contributions to the understanding of computational complexity.
January 5, 2004
Scott Shenker, leader of ICSI's Networking Group, has been selected as an ACM Fellow for his achievements in the field of information technology.
December 2, 2003
ICSI has a new permanent staff member. Scott McComas joined the SysAdmin Staff at the beginning of December.
November 30, 2003
November 13, 2003
November 1, 2003
ICSI has appointed a new Faculty Associate. AnnaLee Saxenian, of UCB's City and Regional Planning Department, will be working with BCIS on Silicon Valley development.
October 22, 2003
Speech Group receives NSF grant "Modeling Idiosyncrasies in Speaking Behavior." Barbara Peskin of ICSI's Speech Group will head a project to improve speaker recognition through incorporation of higher-level features - e.g. derived from prosody, pronunciation patterns, word usage, even distinctive laughs - to augment traditional models that rely on short-term 10-20 msec frames of speech.
Copyright © 2012-2021 International Computer Science Institute (ICSI). All Rights Reserved. | http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/icsi/news?page=34 |
.
Directory
1. Kerstin Fischer,
Usage-based Computational Language Acquisition
2. Udo Kruschwitz,
Corpus Profiling Workshop at IIiX 2008
Message 1: Usage-based Computational Language Acquisition
Date:
13-Aug-2008
From:
Kerstin Fischer <kerstin
sitkom.sdu.dk>
Subject:
Usage-based Computational Language Acquisition
E-mail this message to a friend
Full Title: Usage-based Computational Language Acquisition
Date: 28-Jul-2009 - 03-Aug-2009
Location: Berkeley, CA, USA
Contact Person: Kerstin Fischer
Meeting Email: kerstin
sitkom.sdu.dk
Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics; Language
Acquisition
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
Call Deadline: 07-Sep-2008
Meeting Description:
Usage-based models of language acquisition: computational perspectives
Theme Session at ICLC 11, Berkeley, CA.
Date: July 28-August 3, 2009
Organizers: Kerstin Fischer & Arne Zeschel, University of Southern Denmark
Call for Papers
Theme Session Description:
Usage-based approaches to language acquisition have not only produced many
valuable insights in the field of child language studies (cf. Tomasello 2003 and
Goldberg 2006 for overviews), but have also helped to corroborate important
assumptions of emergentist theories of language in general (cf. Dabrowska 2005).
In line with basic tenets of Cognitive Linguistics, these approaches emphasize
the key role of communicative and experiential grounding in language use and
language structure, and seek to explain its acquisition in terms of general
(i.e., non-specialized) cognitive principles and mechanisms as far as possible.
At the same time, explicit, testable models of how these principles and
mechanisms are implemented in the context of grounded construction learning are
only beginning to be developed (cf. Bod, to appear).
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together language acquisition
researchers from linguistics, psychology and computer science who work on such
models in order to discuss how usage-based constructionist accounts of language
acquisition can benefit from such research. Topics will include, but are not
restricted to:
- cognitive capacities that constitute prerequisites for normal child language
acquisition (cf. Tomasello et al. 2005, Tomasello 2006) and how they can be
accommodated in language learning simulations (e.g., Steels and Kaplan 2002);
- the basic mechanisms and psycholinguistic plausibility of different approaches
to automatic construction learning (e.g., Chang & Maia 2001; Batali 2002; Steels
2004; Dominey and Boucher 2005);
- the kinds of semantic representations that grounded language learning
experiments or simulations should draw on (Bergen & Chang 2005; Feldman 2006);
- the way in which the acquisition of particular constructions may be grounded
in the previous acquisition of certain other constructions (Johnson 2001;
Morris, Cottrell & Elman 2000; Abbot-Smith & Behrens 2006); and, finally,
- ways of accommodating useful notions from Cognitive Linguistics in
computational models of language processing and acquisition (cf. Chang et al.
2002).
The session will compare different approaches to automatic construction learning
and consider the extent to which they can inform usage-based accounts of child
language acquisition. In that, it seeks to bridge the gap between kindred
research in Cognitive Linguistics and related areas of Cognitive Science, and to
provide a forum for discussing important challenges for future research on
emergentist models of language.
Submission Procedure:
Abstracts should be:
- 500 words max
- submitted in .rtf or .doc format
- turned in by Sept 7th at the latest
- accompanied by an e-mail specifying the title of the paper, name(s) of
author(s), affiliation and a contact e-mail address
- sent to kerstin
sitkom.sdu.dk and zeschel
sitkom.sdu.dk
Please note that both the theme session proposal itself and the individual
contributions will undergo independent reviewing by the ICLC program committee.
Message 2: Corpus Profiling Workshop at IIiX 2008
Date:
12-Aug-2008
From:
Udo Kruschwitz <udo
essex.ac.uk>
Subject:
Corpus Profiling Workshop at IIiX 2008
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Full Title: Corpus Profiling Workshop at IIiX 2008
Date: 18-Oct-2008 - 18-Oct-2008
Location: London, United Kingdom
Contact Person: Udo Kruschwitz
Meeting Email: udo
essex.ac.uk
Web Site:
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/corpus-profiling/index.php
Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics
Call Deadline: 05-Sep-2008
Meeting Description:
Corpus Profiling for Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing
Workshop 2008
Call for Papers (Deadline Extended):
Corpus Profiling for Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing
Workshop 2008
18 October 2008
London
Submission deadline: Extended to 5 September 2008
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/corpus-profiling/index.php
Purpose:
We aim to bring together people from different research communities interested
in exploring how corpus characteristics affect the behaviour of techniques in
information retrieval and natural language processing, and to set out a roadmap
for a shared research agenda.
It is well known in NLP and IR that the effectiveness of a technique depends on
both the data on which it is deployed and its match with the task at hand. In
1973, Spärck-Jones attributed differing degrees of success at automatic
classification to differences in dataset characteristics. Since Croft and Harper
(1979), IR performance has repeatedly been related to collection size and other
features, though no upper bound has been found.
The importance of data and task dependencies has been highlighted in IR,
anaphora resolution, automatic summarization and recently, in word sense
disambiguation. Many web/enterprise web retrieval systems rely on URL
properties, link graph properties, click streams, and so on, with performance
dependent on the degree to which this evidence is present and meaningful in a
particular corpus.
Systematically exploring features that can be used effectively to characterise
corpora, has been missing from IR/NLP research. This creates problems with
replicability of experimental results and the development of applications.
The time is right to pursue this dependence systematically to address topics in
tracking the effect of dataset profile on technique performance. Over the past
15 years, the approaches of several subject areas have converged with IR, as
large corpora and test collections assume central importance in research
methodologies. These areas have highlighted issues surrounding the role of data.
Workshop Format:
The workshop will be a day long, in conjunction with the Information Interaction
in Context (IIiX'2008,
http://irsg.bcs.org/iiix2008/
). The workshop will have
three components:
(1) invited talks in the morning, introducing the background from different
perspectives
(2) two afternoon sessions, presenting peer-reviewed papers
(3) a panel discussion (panel composed of presenters and the organizers).
Topics of Interest:
We welcome original research or position papers. We particularly encourage
postgraduate students or postdoctoral researchers to submit papers. Topics of
interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:
- Suitable features to characterise text/language variety, capturing known
effects on technique performance with respect to a task;
- Tasks that depend on aspects of corpus profiles, (e.g., the positive
correlation of QA performance with fact frequency in a corpus);
- Limitations of context-independent frequency-based measures, and exploration
of measures that highlight complex dependencies;
- Tools/techniques for characterising a feature or the extent to which it is
manifested in a corpus;
- Evaluation methodologies for testing feature candidates relative to
task/technique;
- Learnability of features (cf. meta-level learning for classification algorithms).
Important Dates:
5 September 2008: Paper submission due (Deadline Extended)
20 September 2008: Notification of acceptance/rejection
26 September 2008: Camera-ready due
18 October 2008: Workshop
Submission Guidelines:
Original technical papers, short papers and position papers are all welcome.
Please ensure that your submission does not exceed 5,000 words in length. Use 10
point font size, double column for body text, and 12 point bold for headings.
Please send your submission in PDF to all the three organizers
(A.Deroeck
open.ac.uk; d.song
open.ac.uk; udo
essex.ac.uk) with subject ''Corpus
Profiling workshop submission''.
We will publish the accepted papers electronically through BCS's Electronic
Workshops in Computing (eWiC), together with the extended abstracts of invited
talks, a summary of the panel discussion. We will seek to pursue the research
thread through further workshops at relevant conferences. We plan to organize a
post-workshop special issue on a suitable IR or NLP related journal.
Programme Committee:
Anne De Roeck (The Open University)
Udo Kruschwitz (University of Essex)
Ruslan Mitkov (University of Wolverhampton)
Nikolaos Nanas (CERETETH, Greece)
Michael Oakes (University of Sunderland)
Ian Ruthven (University of Strathclyde)
Dawei Song (KMi, The Open University)
Tomek Strzalkowski (SUNY Albany)
Alistair Willis (The Open University)
For further information please visit
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/corpus-profiling/index.php
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Advanced Collaborative Support (ACS) is a scholarly service at HTRC offering collaboration between external scholars and HTRC staff to solve challenging problems related to HTRC tools and services. By working together with scholars, we facilitate computational access to HathiTrust Research Center digital tools (HTRC) as well as the HathiTrust Digital Library (HTDL) based on individual scholarly need. ACS will drive innovation at the scholar's digital workbench for enhancing and developing new techniques for use within the HTRC platform.
Calls for proposals to participate in the ACS program go out approximately once per year. For questions, please send an email to [email protected].
2019 Awardees:
Building large-scale collections of genre fiction
Laure Thompson and David Mimno (Cornell)
This project will develop methods for automatically constructing large-scale collections of genre fiction from HathiTrust. Even, and especially, in digital libraries as large as HathiTrust, it can prove challenging to understand whether the library contains suitable representations of a chosen genre. The researchers plan to focus on collections of speculative fiction novels as a case study, but they intend their solutions to be generalizable. They will identify robust methods for correlating author-title pairs to matching volume sets in HathiTrust. Using these methods in conjunction with lists of novels that were curated by hand, they will build their collections and investigate which works are (over)represented and which are missing. They expect their project will enable scholars to better understand the suitability of studying genre fiction through HathiTrust and highlight underserved author and genre groups. Moreover, the project will result in collections of genre fiction which can be readily reused and reorganized for different lines of humanistic inquiry.
Mapping scientific names to the HathiTrust Digital Library
Matthew J. Yoder and Dmitry Mozzherin (University of Illinois)
This project will create an index of all the scientific names of the Earth’s species found within the HathiTrust corpus. The index, which will likely measure in the hundreds of millions to billions of entries, will consist of a simple link between the scientific name and the volume and page location of that name within HathiTrust. The index will assist in identifying volumes that may be medically relevant, for example by identifying all of the volumes containing the scientific name for the mosquito that carries illnesses such as Zika virus (‘Aedes aegypti’). The index will also allow volumes to be grouped into clusters based on which scientific names they contain to show which taxon (e.g. “mammals”) are most common. This team of researchers has completed similar work across the data of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Their ACS project will allow them to do cross-corpora comparisons.
Supporting The Conglomerate Era Project
Dan Sinykin (Emory)
This project furthers the researcher’s investigation into how the conglomeration of the publishing industry changed literature. The results will be included the researcher’s in-progress book titled The Conglomerate Era: A Computational History of Literature in the Age of the Agent. The project explores a set of publisher-based corpora to see whether there are distinctions in what is published by large publishing houses versus independent presses. It will make use of predictive modeling to further the researcher’s existing work to build a computational model of genre that aids in identifying latent patterns in the publishers’ editorial practices.The project will utilize methods such as genre detection through unsupervised modeling; stylistic differentiation through text classification and supervised learning via logistic regressions; and social network analysis with metadata to determine latent literary connections, especially with regard to gender and race of the author.
Deriving Basic Illustration Metadata
Stephen Krewson (Yale)
This project aims at identifying all pictorial elements in educational texts from 1800-1850 to explore the interplay between progressive education and print media in the early nineteenth century. The resulting research will characterize the extent to which wood engravings and other reprographic materials were shared among educational publishers. The researcher will extract specific features from page images, such as illustration location, using advances in machine learning. The project intends to make use of the process developed to identify pictorial elements to motivate a new metadata field that describes the location and type of illustrations on the page. An ultimate goal of the project is to move toward “machine-read” texts where the data generated by classifiers and dimensionality reduction techniques are bundled as metadata with the corresponding volumes and made available to future research. (“Machine-read” is a term is borrowed from researcher Ben Schmidt.)
Semantic Phasor Embeddings
Molly Des Jardin, Scott Enderle, and Katie Rawson (University of Pennsylvania)
This project intends to explore a novel way of abstracting and representing textual data that could aid in new ways of discovering and deduplicating items in HathiTrust, detecting and analyzing genre, or analyzing narrative analogies. The project team will investigate the utility of a certain kind of mathematical representation of text documents, called semantic phasor embeddings, that combine a mathematical structure called phasors with data from standard word embeddings (strings of numbers that represent an item). If successful, the vectors could represent documents with a tunable degree of granularity, which could provide an opportunity to share vectors representing copyright-protected without concerns about wholesale text reproduction. The vectors would also carry valuable information about the global ordinal structure of the volumes, so that the items could be queried, clustered, and visualized in a robust way that recognizes similarity not just in the content of the items, but also their structure.
2017 Awardees:
Computational Support for Reading Chicago Reading
Robin Burke, John Shanahan, Ana Lucic, DePaul University
The Reading Chicago Reading team will seek to extend their own research on the “One Book, One Chicago” city-wide reading program by incorporating textual analysis on books chosen for the OBOC program, as well as comparison texts. Further, the resulting textual analysis—including toponym extraction, sentiment analysis, and story arc detection—will be paired with library patron, circulation and demographic data to present a fuller picture about the OBOC program, and the books chosen for inclusion.
Project report: Computational Support for ‘Reading Chicago Reading’
Modeling the History of Book Design
David Bamman and Bjorn Hartmann, University of California, Berkeley
This project will utilize the HTRC Data Capsule to conduct feature extraction on page images from 10,000 in-copyright books in the HathiTrust repository, extracting features such as page construction, line justification, leading between baselines, kerning between letter pairs/combinations, line density per page, characters per line, position of images, typeface (serif, sans-serif) and font size. Beyond the analysis and utility of the extracted feature set, this project also seeks to serve as a use case for engagement with HathiTrust/HTRC beyond books-as-strings-of-words analysis.
Project report: Modeling the History of Book Design, HTRC Whitepaper: Summary of Activities
The Power of Place: Structure, Culture, and Continuities in U.S. Women’s Movements
Laura Nelson, Northeastern University
Dr. Nelson’s project will study the women's movement in the United States from 1848-1975 in two cities, New York City and Chicago, using new advances in network analysis and computational text analysis to identify structural and cultural diversity. This approach is three-pronged: building a workset of writing by individuals and organizations within the movements in New York and Chicago, using network analysis to measure the structure of this movement, and conducting computational text analysis to measure the underlying culture and ideas within the movement, including lexical analyses to identify distinctive words and topic modeling to identify dominant themes.
Project report: The Power of Place: Structure, Culture, and Continuity in U.S. Women's Movements
A Computational History of the U.S. Novel, 1950-2000
Richard Jean So, McGill University
Dr. So’s project seeks to write a new history of the American novel by examining a series of large textual datasets focused on the full cycle of the U.S. literary field from production to reception to canonization. The major goal is to identify the emergence of new patterns of language, style, discourse and themes in American novels as they appear at different moments in the cycle of literary production and reception, including publication via large publishing houses such as Random House, and book reviews in major U.S. periodicals. This will be achieved through using the HTRC Data Capsule environment to undertake text analysis of full texts, including using various methods in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, such as topic models, word embeddings, and specialized tools such as BookNLP, which allows for the extraction of grammatical dependencies and characters.
Project report: A Computational History of the U.S. Novel, 1950-2000
Measuring Literary Novelty
Laura McGrath, Devin Higgins, Arend Hintze, Michigan State University
This work draws on ongoing collaborative efforts to develop a method for applying genetic sequencing tools to the study of literature in order to identify and measure literary novelty, and address questions of literary history, canonicity, and prestige. Previous results have been suggestive of a prominent connection between the purely information-based novelty of the sequences of characters that comprise literary texts, and the experimental newness we associate with modernist literary texts. Leveraging the HTRC Data Capsule will offer the potential to apply this theory at scale for the first time, and potentially lead into new research into modernism and the literary history of the 20th century.
A Writer’s Workshop Workset with the Program Era Project (PEP)
Nicholas Kelly, Loren Glass, Nikki White, University of Iowa
The PEP team will compile a proof-of-concept workset with, at first, prominent individuals (faculty, staff, students) who were involved with the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (IWW), then produce “style cards” for each author’s works (by volume), based on stylometric data gathered through text analysis of the IWW workset within the HTRC Data Capsule. It is the goal of the project to also create a living workset that can be continually updated for scholars who wish to engage with IWW authors and their writing.
Project report: Program Era Project
Off-Cycle project:
The Life of Words
David-Antoine Williams, The University of Waterloo
This project aimed to match Oxford English Dictionary (OED) references to HathiTrust volume IDs, in order then to draw down associated metadata using the heterogenous and fragmented bibliographical data in OED2 and OED3. It furthered the work of The Life of Words (LOW), a research project in its third year, led by Dr. Williams at St Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo in Canada. The aim of the project is to enhance the OED with metadata concerning its corpus of 3.5 million quotations.
Project report: The Life of Words
2016 Awardees:
Fighting Fever in the Caribbean: Medicine and Empire, 1650-1902
Mariola Espinosa, University of Iowa
This project seeks to explore the history of yellow fever in the Caribbean by comparing how the disease was described by residents of the Caribbean to the European perspective, including through sentiment analysis of text referencing yellow fever. Her work will be visualized spatially in a map generated with support from the University of Iowa’s Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio. She will build a corpus of text from the HathiTrust Digital Library related to yellow fever and filth in the Caribbean to track the use of the terms “filth” and “filthiness” from 1650 to 1902.
Project report: Fighting Fever in the Caribbean
Inside the Creativity Boom
Samuel Franklin, Brown University
This project will map the increasing use and shifting meanings of the words “creative” and “creativity,” with a particular focus on the twentieth century. A custom “creativity corpus” will be assembled and processed to identify linguistic patterns via a number of text analysis and natural language processing techniques. Brown’s project will make use of the functionality developed for HathiTrust + Bookworm.
Project report: Inside the Creativity Boom
The Chicago School: Wikification as the First Step in Text Mining in Architectural History
Dan Baciu, Illinois Institute of Technology
This project will look at the Chicago School of architecture and examine its history of reception over the last 75 years, as well as identify patterns in its international spread and influence. Baciu will use named entity recognition in his analysis, notably deploying the Wikifier tool on a large sample corpus of HathiTrust data for the first time.
Project report: The Chicago School: Evolving Systems of Value
Signal and Noise and Pride and Prejudice: Toward an Information History of Romantic Fiction
Dallas Liddle, Augsburg College
This project will test two hypotheses about information theory and information density as they relate to a digital humanities approach to studying Romantic-era British fiction. The concept of "information" used in mathematical information theory may help digital humanists evaluate the information density of textual forms. This project tests a theory that the popular and critical success of the novel in British print culture after 1815 may be related to increased information density and sophistication of information encoding in those years, especially via innovations introduced by Jane Austen and Walter Scott.
Project report: Signal and Noise and Pride and Prejudice
2015 Awardees:
The Trace of Theory
Geoffrey Rockwell, Laura Mandell, Stefan Sinclair, Matthew Wilkens, Susan Brown, University of Alberta, Texas A&M University, University of Notre Dame
Rockwell, Mandell, Sinclair, Wilkens, and Brown aim to subset theoretical subsets from the HT public corpus and apply large-scale topic modeling on the subsets. The researchers will develop tools and computational methods for tracking the concept of "theory”.
Project report: The Trace of Theory project
Detecting Literary Plagiarisms: The Case of Oliver Goldsmith
Douglas Duhaime, University of Notre Dame
Duhaime will work on developing tools for detecting plagiarisms. He will focus on the case of Oliver Goldsmith, to detect the literary thefts of Goldsmith by using machine learning techniques.
Project report: Coming soon!
Taxonomizing the Texts: Towards Cultural-Scale Models of Full Text
Colin Allen, Jaimie Murdock, Indiana University Bloomington
Allen and Murdock will carry out a cultural-scale investigation and topic modeling on HT public-domain full text through random sampling to select collections according to the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). | https://wiki.htrc.illinois.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=79069216 |
O'Reilly, Cliff (2016) Computational Linguistic Models of Mental Spaces. Masters thesis, University of Essex.
In this report we describe a computational linguistic model of mental spaces. We take theories from cognitive science as inspiration and, using the FrameNet database, construct a model upon which we execute a number of experiments. Our underlying assumption is that, in order to develop computer systems that have near human capacities for natural language processing, those systems will need to model cognitive processes. Gilles Fauconnier's theory of Mental Spaces provides a detailed background of partitioned semantic relations. These relationships can be constrained by Frames and Scripts. We use pre-existing computer tools to develop a model that mimics this framework. Fauconnier's and Turner's work on Conceptual Integration and current theories of dynamic systems are further inspiration for a model of conceptual integration using Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a topic modelling algorithm. We choose three experiments with which to validate the usefulness of this approach. Our fi�rst experiment investigates text classi�cation using the Full Text corpus within FrameNet. Our second experiment uses the corpora supplied for the SemEval Textual Semantic Similarity Task in order to validate the hypothesis that mental space networks are related to semantic similarity. The third experiment in this report investigates the Blending model and the hypothesis that this is related to the style of the document text. The results for these experiments were mixed. We are pleased with some high Micro F1 scores (0.9), but disappointed that overall the results are not conclusive. We describe the analysis of the outcomes and also the drawbacks of our methods. Finally we explain our thoughts on how these models could be improved and extended by learning lessons from our work and also including other work and approaches. | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/18085/ |
The members of Tulengua.es are dedicated to developing applications for natural language processing, mainly in Spanish. Within its field of work are applications oriented to the web and mobile devices (Android and iOS). Tulengua.es team has a long research career in the field of computational linguistics that has allowed it to develop applications with features and functionalities that differentiate them from other similar Internet applications available in terms of their level of detail, content and possibilities.
Our applications make use of a lexical database of their own that the Tulengua.es team has compiled over the years of research. The characteristics of the linguistic database can be consulted in the Corpus TIP section of this website.
On this website you can find, as an example, different applications developed by the Tulengua.es team related to the Spanish language.
Tulengua.es team develops mainly products in the areas of natural language processing, computational linguistics, structuring and mining of linguistic data ...
BOOK:
La conjugación de verbos en español y su morfología
Carreras-Riudavets, F. J.; Hernández-Figueroa, Z.; Rodríguez-Rodríguez, G.
Editorial LULU; ISBN 978-1-4466-9009-3; 2010
Number of pages: 615.
Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu. | http://tulengua.es/ |
Abstract:
Intrusion detection systems (IDS) typically take high computational complexity to examine data features and identify intrusion patterns due to the size and nature of the current intrusion detection datasets. Data pre-processing techniques (such as feature selection) are being used to reduce such complexity by eliminating irrelevant and redundant features in such datasets. The objective of this study is to analyse the effectiveness and efficiency of some feature selection approaches, namely wrapper-based and filter-based modelling approaches. To achieve that, machine learning models are designed in a hybrid approach with either wrapper or filter selection processes. Five machine learning algorithms are used on the wrapper and filter-based feature selection methods to build the IDS models using the UNSW-NB15 dataset. The wrapper-based hybrid intrusion detection model comprises a decision tree algorithm to guide the selection process and three filter-based methods, namely information gain, gain ratio, and relief, are used for comparison to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of the wrapper approach. Furthermore, a comparison with other state-of-the-art intrusion detection approaches is performed. The experimental results show that the wrapper-based method is quite effective in comparison to state-of-the-art works; however, it requires high computational time in comparison to the filter-based methods while achieving similar results. Our work also revealed unobserved issues on the conformity of the UNSW-NB15 dataset. | https://procon.bg/article/hybrid-intrusion-detection-decision-tree-feature-selection |
- See also changes related to Metabolism, or pages that link to Metabolism or to this page or whose text contains "Metabolism".
Contents
Parent topics
- Biology [r]: The science of life — of complex, self-organizing, information-processing systems living in the past, present or future. [e]
- Biochemistry [r]: The chemistry of living things; a field of both biology and chemistry. [e]
Subtopics
General pathways
- Carbohydrate metabolism [r]: The various biochemical processes responsible for the formation, breakdown and interconversion of carbohydrates in living organisms. [e]
- Fatty acid metabolism [r]: Oxidative degradation of saturated fatty acids in which two-carbon units are sequentially removed from the molecule with each turn of the cycle, and metabolized so that it can be used as a source of energy in aerobic respiration. [e]
- Protein synthesis [r]: "a certain kind of natural production (or biosynthesis) of polypeptides for protein molecules according to a nucleic acid code" [e]
- Nucleic acid metabolism [r]: Process by which nucleotides are synthesized and degraded, using an anabolic mechanism generally involving chemical reaction of phosphate, pentose sugar, and a nitrogenous base. [e]
- Central metabolism [r]: Add brief definition or description
Anabolism
- Anabolic [r]: Biological processes that build larger molecules from smaller ones, and increase the size of bones, organs and muscles. [e]
- Biosynthesis [r]: The production of chemical metabolites by living systems. [e]
- Glycogenesis [r]: Conversion of glucose to glycogen, in which glucose molecules are added to chains of glycogen for storage, which is stimulated by insulin from the pancreas. [e]
- Gluconeogenesis [r]: Formation of glucose, especially by the liver, from noncarbohydrate precursors, such as amino acids, lactate, pyruvate, and the glycerol portion of fats. [e]
- Porphyrin [r]: Class of cyclic compounds in which the parent macrocycle consists of four pyrrole-type units interconnected at their α carbon atoms via a methine bridge, and functioning as a metal-binding cofactor in haemoglobin, chlorophyll, and certain enzymes. [e]
- HMG-CoA reductase pathway [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Secondary metabolism [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Photosynthesis [r]: The process by which an organism captures and stores energy from sunlight, energy it uses to power its cellular activities. [e]
- Calvin cycle [r]: A metabolic cycle, discovered by Melvin Calvin, that is responsible for the reduction of carbon dioxide to sugar in the stroma of chloroplasts. [e]
- Carbon fixation [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Glyoxylate cycle [r]: Metabolic pathway in some orgnaisms which uses acetyl CoAs to synthesize carbohydrates. [e]
Catabolism
- Glycolysis [r]: A biochemical pathway by which a molecule of glucose is oxidized to two molecules of pyruvate. [e]
- Glycogenolysis [r]: Breakdown conversion of glycogen to glucose, which occurs in the liver and is stimulated by glucagon from the pancreas and adrenaline from the adrenal medulla. [e]
- Citric acid cycle [r]: A series of enzyme-catalysed chemical reactions of central importance in all living cells that use oxygen as part of cellular respiration. [e]
- Beta-oxidation [r]: Add brief definition or description
Drug metabolism
- Drug metabolism [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Cytochrome P450 oxidase [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Flavin-containing monooxygenase system [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Alcohol metabolism [r]: Add brief definition or description
Nitrogen metabolism
- Nitrogen cycle [r]: A complex process in which the element nitrogen moves into the air, back down into the soil, is changed chemically by various processes, and returns to the atmosphere once again. This cycle is necessary for life on earth. [e]: | https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Metabolism/Related_Articles |
Typical Applications of Molasses:
- Used to supplement BOD deficiency in wastewaters
- Pharmaceutical wastewaters
- Municipal wastewater treatment
- Industrial wastewater treatment
Molasses is made of long chains of sugar that can be hydrolysed to single glucose units. Microorganisms use glucose as a direct source of energy to carry out cellular processes that remove nutrients and contaminants from industrial and municipal wastewater.
Typical Applications of Molasses:
We deliver our products in various bulk and mini-bulk formats. Talk to our sales team today to discuss your specific shipping requirements. | https://acornwater.ie/product/molasses/ |
So I have an app where users visit locations. I’d like to add a summary banner with the number of visits in the last 30 days. I’ve only be able to list the Logged in User’s total visit. Any recommendations on listing total visits in the last 30 days?
Just play around with the date & time property and count.
day 1 - n count
day 2 - n count.
Day 30 - Total n counts.
So I have a business listings app. I have a collection called Page Views, and every time a user visits a listing’s details page, a countdown triggers, which creates a Page Views record. So in addition to the date created field, I have an expiration date field that’s 30 days away from the created date. On my listing’s admin analytics page, I have another countdown that I converted to a list. This “list” is of any Page View records with an expiration date that has passed. Once the countdown reaches 0, it deletes said records. So then, I can always sum the total number of live Page View records, since they’ll always be within 30 days.
It sounds like you’d like to do it for users, rather than a listing or location. The same concept can be achieved by linking the Page Views collection to your Users collection instead. The key is making that countdown list trigger/occur before the user can view the desired 30-days total. For instance, if the countdown occurs on the same page as where you’re showing the number, it’ll show the initial number and decrease in real time as the expired list is deleted. I hope it all makes sense.
I’m sure there may be an easier way, but that’s how I managed to do it.
Thanks for the insights. See what I have below. I just have magic text and want the count to be generated but don’t have a way to calculate the actual number. Where in my app would I do this?
@Sutter_j44 - Thanks for the details but I don’t want my records to disappear and hoping there’s an easier way.
@endieumunna - When you say “Just play around with the date & time property and count” what does that mean exactly?
@Emeka So right now, it looks like your “Visit count” magic text is just a single field within a collection, like a user’s name or phone number within your main Users collection. Am I correct on that? Are you using a formula or trigger that just updates a number every time a visit occurs? If you want to somehow calculate a number that’s based on a specific amount of days, you’ll need to count the total number of records in a separate collection, where you judge a created date vs another date. That’s what endieumunna meant by playing around with date and time properties. You say you don’t want to delete any records. Keep in mind, in the example I explained above, those records are only Page View records…not User records, not Listings records, etc. It only serves the purpose of helping me get a 30-day count. But if you go the route of using a separate collection just for view records and you don’t want to delete them, perhaps you can create a formula that only counts the number of view records from “today-30” or something. I’ll play around with my setup and see if I can come up with something different than my auto-delete example.
Ok, so I just did some experimenting with my current set up. If you scroll up, you’ll see I have a separate collection “Page Views” that’s connected to my “Listings” collection. Each time a user visits a page, a new record is created in the “Page Views” collection. I went a created a magic text input and counted the total number of Page View records for a specific listing, but only those records where the date created was between 30 days ago and the start of today. This method bypasses having to delete anything, but keep in that something like a collection solely dedicated to page views can stack up quickly, especially if you have a lot of users. I’d suggest still going with an auto-delete method, so you prevent too many records.
Thanks a ton! I should have tried this haha. I went a slightly different route given the “Is Between” setting wasn’t working for me. I used is after instead.
This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed. | https://forum.adalo.com/t/last-30-days-calculation/29216 |
The Summary category contains mathematical functions that count, add, and divide report data in groups.
Sum Calculates the sum of the selected numeric column. This produces a global total.
Count Counts the total number of items contained in a group. If no group is specified, all items in the entire report are counted.
Count by Page Counts the total number of items contained in a group on one rendered page. If no group is specified, all items on the entire page are counted.
Group Count Counts the total number of items in the selected groups. If no group is specified, all items in all groups are counted.
Minimum Identifies the lowest or smallest value in a group.
Maximum Identifies the highest or largest value in a group.
Sum Quotient Performs simple division on the sum totals from two columns and returns a numeric value.
Sum Quotient Percent Performs simple division on the sum totals from two columns and returns a percentage value.
Calculation Stores the result of a calculation. This function can be used to convert a group of Running functions into a single total Summary function.
Count For Page Counts items on a page according to the specified criteria. This value is reset to zero when a new page is reached.
Sum For Page Adds all of the specified items on one page and produces a total. This value is reset to zero when a new page is reached. | https://help.pentaho.com/Documentation/5.2/0L0/130/040/050/000/020 |
The FS Counts page summarizes the number of fax send (FS) files in each of the queue directories, together with the number in the SENT and FAIL directories. Unchecking the box alongside each directory name excludes it from future directory scans. The picture above also shows an example of a blue border selected by $colorframe.
Checked The counting is restarted whenever you switch to the FS Counts page from another page, and also when focus is returned to the COPIAFACTS application and the FS Counts page is visible. In the latter case the counting only restarts if more than a minute has elapsed since the counting was last restarted. This avoids a problem with some remote control software which may send repeated Windows messages which cause the counting to continuously restart.
Since counting will always restart on returning to the page, the 'Automatic Refresh' setting also cancels counting when you switch to another page, to conserve resources.
Unchecked The counting is only restarted when you press the Refresh button. Counting will also start automatically when you visit the FS Counts page for the first time after starting COPIAFACTS.
Counting continues when you switch to another page in COPIAFACTS or to another application. When you return to the FS Counts page any unfinished count will still be running. Use the Stop/Clear button if you wish to cancel the counts, or the Refresh button to refresh them.
An individual total may be recalculated by unchecking the box and then checking it again (or by double-clicking). Since the scanning is done by a low-priority process, it may take a while to count a directory containing thousands of files, and the counting may delay finding new FS files for the CopiaFacts engine to process. If you have a very large number of FS files in multiple queues it may be more efficient to use the individual checkboxes to count one queue at a time.
Note that the queue display shows the contents of the central queue folders, and therefore that not all the items counted may be scheduled for transmission on the node in use.
When the TOSEND queue priorities have been modified on the Queues Page, the FS Count numbers appear in a matching sequence, and on a light brown background to highlight this condition. | http://copia.com/support/refmanual82/fscountspage.htm |
Previously, the default sort for the People page list was alphabetical. We’ve now made the default sort configurable. For UHC mode, this would likely mean sorting by last visited date. In the future, it could include sorting by number of visits this month or another value.
To enable default contact sorting to be based on last visited date, you need to configure it in app_settings. Please visit the following documentation in cht-docs to learn how. [#4752]
Add display of visit counts and conditionally style them (UHC mode)
We added visit count numbers to the right side of each family row. The visit count will display a count of the number of times that family has been visited so far within the current month. The exact definition of the calendar month is configurable. This is because some partners may follow the Western calendar literally, while other partners have different definitions of a month (ex: Muso counts from the 26th of one month until the 25th of the next month). Whatever forms have been configured to calculate “Date last visited” will be the same forms used to calculate “Visits this month.” Please note this will be a straightforward count of forms submitted and cannot be configured to only include a max number of forms in a particular time frame, such as “per day.”
These visit counts are also available to be conditionally styled. If the partner has no specific goals, just like with Targets, the text is normal black. If the partner does have specific goals, we use red to indicate “bad”, yellow to indicate “ok” and green to indicate “good” or “goal met.” It is also possible to display an icon next to the count number. This icon is only available as an option if the partner has a goal. If the partner does not have a goal, there will never be an icon. The icon is positioned to the left of the count number on the same baseline.
Note: We removed the red warning icon by the date last visited text that we implemented in 2.16.1. The new functionality and location of the icon as described here replaces what we did in 2.16.1. It used to be tied to date last visited. It is now tied to visits this month.
To enable the specific goal (which color codes the number of visits), you need to configure it in app_settings. Please visit the following documentation in cht-docs to learn how. [#4758]
Improvements
LHS list doesn’t update “out of page” items
LiveList and Search webapp services previously did not support sorting items by fields/values that are likely to change (e.g. by last visited date). Now, when the list is multiple pages long and it’s not entirely loaded, if an existent item receives a change that would push it lower than the current number of loaded items, it will refresh and move to appropriate position in the list. [#4782).]
There are view generation errors
[#4612]
Feedback
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Glad to hear it! Please tell us how we can improve.
Sorry to hear that. Please tell us how we can improve. | https://docs.communityhealthtoolkit.org/core/releases/2.18.0/ |
I am going to keep this post short and mainly filled with some stats and pretty book pictures. Spring into Horror and Dewey’s readathons are pretty much my favorite reading community events of the year. I try to be as involved as possible; not just reading but also blogging, tweeting, and chatting in discussion groups. My TBR generally grows three sizes each time but I AM HERE for the book recommendations.
DEWEY’S READATHON took place on April 6th and I was again a Dewey’s blog and Twitter host. I loved hearing from all the participants throughout my two hours. I also posted discussion questions into the Dewey’s Goodreads group. I was able to finish two books, one poetry collection, and read or listened to a few pages here and there from other books. I, of course, kept track of my hourly page count and you can check that out in the graph below. As you can see I did have a few interruptions in the form of napping breaks! I don’t mind napping but I am a little sad I missed the very last hour. I truly fell asleep with my book open and didn’t wake up for a few hours after the readathon had ended. I also completely missed adding my page counts to the overall Dewey database this time.
Total pages read (including parts of 1 audiobook): 929
Books completed: 3
Books perused: 3
You can read my thoughts on these books in my monthly review post here.
SPRING INTO HORROR was a month-long readathon and I definitely mood-read a lot of horror novels for this! This is also one reason why I ended up not completing my April goals (see here) as I picked up books with real dark themes instead of finishing Watchmen or Jane Eyre, though Watchmen is quite sinister at times. I also read Wuthering Heights and was toying with the idea of counting it toward this readathon but I couldn’t get myself to do it.
Total pages read (including audiobooks): 2748
Books completed: 7
Books listened to: 2
Again, you can read my reviews of these books in my monthly update post here.
Did you participate in any of these or any other readathons this month? Gimme the deets in the comments below! | https://ichlese.blog/2019/04/30/wrapping-up-spring-into-horror-and-deweys-readathon/ |
Hi All,
I was wondering if anybody knows if this is possible?
I am trying to build a metric that tracks the number of minutes that we have an outage on our website over any given time period. At the moment when the site is down the visitor is presented with a holding page called "holding-page".
I have created the following metric that looks for if the "holding-page" is 50% of the total page views (for the site).
The problem is, when I look in a report broken down by the minute we can track this - however when I switch to a day breakout, the number returns to zero as Adobe is summing over the day. Essentially, the metric is working as expected but not as desired. I could calculate the data in SQL from our data feed but I want to keep this in Work space as it is more accessible to the business. Does anybody know a way to do this?
Thanks
Dave
Quick update on this - The following returns the correct answer:
Please note that I have Visit Number = 1 as I noticed a caching issue where returning visitors were landing on the page which was artificially raising it.
Hope this helps someone. | https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-analytics-questions/tracking-outages-by-the-minute/qaq-p/304519 |
With Equitrac Office and Equitrac Express, when running reports, the total counts reported in Reports Manager and on the MFP device differ for the same time period. The count is often noticeably higher on the MFP device, what could be the cause of this discrepancy?
Answer:
This behavior can occur if the MFP device and Equitrac count pages using different methods, for example; Equitrac might count an 11 x 17 size page as one page, while the MFP device counts the same 11 x 17 page as two pages. A single color page might be tracked as one page in Equitrac, but more than one page by an MFP. Also, Equitrac tracks a duplex job based on the print driver information.
The print driver could send data to Equitrac indicating that a one page duplex job is to be counted as one page, whereas the MFP could count the duplex job as two pages.
If the discrepancy between Equitrac and the MFP is large and cannot be accounted for by counting differences, ensure that you are only comparing print jobs (in Equitrac) to print jobs (on the MFP) or copy jobs (in Equitrac) to copy jobs (on the MFP) and that the MFP count does not include fax and/or scan jobs.
To verify the cause of the discrepancy, review the Equitrac reports for numerous zero page counts. This might indicate a problem within Equitrac configuration. If no zero page counts are found, contact the MFP vendor to clarify how pages are counted.
To troubleshoot the discrepancies, send and monitor numerous print jobs to the MFP device, comparing the Equitrac reported count with the device count. | https://knowledge.kofax.com/MFD_Productivity/Equitrac_Office_Express/Troubleshooting/Discrepancy_on_Page_Counts_Between_Equitrac_Reports_and_MFP_Device |
Text Frequency Stats: ligwak
About this Page:This page indicates the frequency of the related string(s) of text in a large sample text (23 million words) in the Tagalog language.
Strings searched:
ligwak
Click to view example texts found »
String frequency counts:
ligwak :: 6
Total count:
6
64.63%This is not a very common word. 64.63% of all dictionary entries occur more freqeuntly in sample texts than this one.
Caveat: This page counts the frequency of these strings with no regard to accent/stress in pronunciation (since accents and stresses are not indicated in our sample Tagalog texts). This means that words with different meanings for differently stressed syllables will show up with the same frequency indicator count. Use the frequency indicator with caution for words where the spelling is the same for multiple meanings or stress locations: it is likely one meaning is more frequent than the others, even though the frequency indicator posted here is the same. | https://www.tagaloglessons.com/dictionary/text_frequency.php?translation_entry_id=11667 |
Text Frequency Stats: armado
About this Page:This page indicates the frequency of the related string(s) of text in a large sample text (23 million words) in the Tagalog language.
Strings searched:
armado, armadong
Click to view example texts found »
String frequency counts:
armado :: 728
armadong :: 856
Total count:
1,584
4.7%Only 4.7% of all dictionary entries occur more freqeuntly in sample texts than this one.
Caveat: This page counts the frequency of these strings with no regard to accent/stress in pronunciation (since accents and stresses are not indicated in our sample Tagalog texts). This means that words with different meanings for differently stressed syllables will show up with the same frequency indicator count. Use the frequency indicator with caution for words where the spelling is the same for multiple meanings or stress locations: it is likely one meaning is more frequent than the others, even though the frequency indicator posted here is the same. | https://www.tagaloglessons.com/dictionary/text_frequency.php?translation_entry_id=6291 |
I want to count the number of sessions in Google Analytics so that:
- at least one of Page A, Page B or Page C were viewed
- avoid counting twice sessions where there was more than 1 view of these pages (e.g. where Page A and Page C were both viewed).
Simply summing up unique pageviews doesn't do the trick, since I count twice sessions that included Page A and Page C.
Is there a way to configure a report to do so? Other way? | https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/79642/how-can-i-view-in-google-analytics-the-number-of-sessions-where-one-of-a-few-pag |
In his book The Mindful Way Through Stress, mindfulness teacher Shamash Alidina reminds us that the level of stress we experience is linked to how much we believe our thoughts about a stressor.
Through mindfulness and meditation, we learn that we can choose to empower specific thoughts while ignoring others.
This is important because of certain cognitive biases — errors in thinking that occur as we process and interpret information in the world around us.
One cognitive bias particularly relevant to resilience and well-being is the negativity bias: the tendency to give more attention and weight to negative experiences and information. Another is confirmation bias: the tendency to seek out, notice, and remember information that supports our pre-existing instinct or point of view, while avoiding or ignoring information that contradicts it. | https://pharmacyworklifematters.com/2020/01/14/dont-believe-everything-you-think/ |
South Palm Beach, FL — You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t be concerned about something that never happened. This is a chance to consider why you’re reading this right now, even if you’re reading this for yucks.
The fact of the matter is that we don’t know what is going on at the time of this writing. But, perhaps we will, and if you are reading this in the future and we know more, it’s still time to consider why you allow stuff like this in your head.
You want to believe it, even if the more rational part of your brain tries to put on the cognitive idiot brakes.
Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes individuals to seek out, favor, interpret, and retain information that confirms their previous ideas. For instance, if a person is provided with a large amount of information on a specific topic, confirmation bias may cause them to retain only the pieces of information that confirm their preexisting beliefs.
Confirmation bias influences people’s judgment and decision-making in many areas of their lives and often is an automatic, visceral reaction to ambiguity.
So, if you haven’t figured it out, it’s about confirmation bias, which might be the single most existential threat we face on Earth. At least one significant contributing factor to our demise.
And lastly, we figure that some will think a rant like this contributes to the problem. Criticism noted. But intent plays a significant role here, as does fiction, both of which we seem to have downplayed or dismissed in the past few years. So instead, we’ve compartmentalized and categorized them to make them easier to deal with: fiction is a Netflix episode of your favorite series, and intention is some weird, unknowing personal experience, like how people describe their experience with religion.
So before you look for a story that reinforces what you already believe to be true, take a moment and examine your intentions. What you might be reading might be fiction. | https://gishgallop.com/why-you-should-be-concerned-about-hillary-clintons-involvement-in-the-mar-a-lago-raids/ |
Ceramic vases are beautiful, and useful for holding your favorite cut flowers as well. Luckily, you don't have to be a master potter or even own a pottery wheel to craft your own unique, personalized ceramic vase. If you have access to a kiln, you can use regular pottery clay. However, if you don't have a kiln, you can choose a polymer clay and simply harden it in your home oven. With these easy-to-follow instructions, you create a simple vase that can be decorated however you like. Give it as a gift or use it yourself. Either way, it's super easy and can be completed in an afternoon.
Things You'll Need
- Clay
- Rolling pin
- Plastic knife without ridges (or other smooth cutting implement)
- Plastic or wood scraper
Video of the Day
Choose a flat, smooth working surface that can be cleaned easily.
Knead a large handful of clay for a few moments until it is soft and pliable.
Form the clay into a ball, and flatten slightly.
Use the rolling pin to roll the clay to about 1/4 inch thick.
Cut a large rectangle out of the clay.
Form the rectangle into a cylinder, pinching and smoothing the edges together.
Place one hand inside the cylinder, and with the other hand, hold the plastic scraper gently on the outside of the cylinder. Use your hands and the scraper to manipulate the clay into the desired shape. Set aside.
Knead the leftover bits of clay into a ball, and flatten it slightly. Roll the flattened ball to about 1/2 inch thick.
Gently set the vase onto the rolled out piece of clay, and cut around the bottom of the vase.
Dip your finger in some water, and run it along the bottom edge of the vase. Join the clay piece that you've just cut to the bottom of the vase cylinder by gently pinching and smoothing the clay together at the joint. This will form the base of your vase. This step may take some time.
Place the vase into a kiln or oven to harden. When finished, you can glaze, paint or decorate your vase as desired. | https://www.ehow.com/how_4828653_ceramic-vase.html |
Last summer, in August of 2014, I had the fantastic opportunity to participate in a series of what are sometimes called 'alternative firings'. In fact, looking at the dates, it was exactly a year ago, and that makes this post somewhat of an anniversary and homage to the experience.
To set the scene: picture a dozen potters and their dogs or significant others all gathered together at a lovely hilltop property. There's a small pond, plenty of land for tenting, and a summer home. Everything is green, cool, and peaceful. In one small corner of the land are a few kilns, a large hole dug in the ground, and some clamshell charcoal grills. We had all the necessary tools to have a weekend full of alternative firings - we would be exploring pit fire, raku, horsehair, and obvara. For the purposes of this post, I'll be talking strictly about what we called 'raku' firing, since it seems to be the most confusing, and the current use of the technique tends to stray from the original use.
If you look up 'raku definition' on Google, the most popular definition that comes up relates to the lead-glazed tea bowls used in the Japanese tea ceremony. Knowing what we know about lead, and what I will tell you about the temperature that raku generally fires to (not high enough to make it water-tight), you could probably think of this traditional definition as quite confusing, at best. From what I understand of the tea ceremony (not much - if anyone is an expert, feel free to correct me), the length of time the tea actually spent in the cup was not very long, so there wasn't time for the lead to leach into the tea, or for the tea to really absorb into the cup, causing brittleness and breakage.
In our modern, non-traditional times, raku fired pottery is never considered food-safe (although most raku glazes are now lead free), and only work that would be decorative or artistic should be glazed in this manner. I made a lot of vases and candle holders for this alternative firing weekend, because I can't stand the thought of a non-functional piece of pottery that I have made. For those of you that are thinking about the fact that these pieces are not watertight - there are ways to seal the inside so that the container can, in fact, hold water.
But moving on! Let's talk about the process of modern raku firing.
1. Make something. You've got to start with something. A vase, a decorative dish, a handbuilt animal.
2. Bisque fire the something. Bisque, or biscuit, firing is the first of two firings in making pottery. Your vase begins as some clay dust mixed with water. You make it into the shape of a vase, and then let it dry. Most of the water evaporates out at this point, and now you've made clay dust hold a shape, but it is very brittle and fragile at this step. To harden it, you must bisque fire the piece. This process squeezes the clay particles together and makes them harder by essentially baking the remainder of the water out of the piece. The result is that the trace elements in the clay morph and blend and merge together to create a much more solid, yet still absorbent, piece of clay.
3. Using a raku specific glaze or glaze formula, paint, spray, or dip your something to your desire. Ceramic glazes are essentially different chemical compounds, combined in different ratios, mixed with water. The fired result of the piece will depend on lots of factors - the ratio of aforementioned ingredients, what the ingredients are, how thickly the glaze is applied, in what manner the glaze is applied, the type of clay the glaze is being applied to, the shape and thickness of the piece, the temperature the kiln fires to, how quickly it fires.... I could go on, but you get the idea. The point is, there are a lot of factors involved in making this kind of work, and one only has a minute amount of control over each of them. This means that each raku fired piece is truly one of a kind - results are very hard to duplicate. Raku glazes are specially formulated to create drastic results based on the method of firing, which is:
4. Fire kiln to specified temperature (our ideal kiln temperature goal was about 1800ºF), remove red hot pieces (very carefully) with tongs and proper heat shielding gloves and heat resistant clothing, place in a bed of shredded paper and cover with more shredded paper until the piece catches the paper on fire. Let burn for a handful of seconds, then cover completely with metal cover (trash can, barbecue lid). This is what we used the clamshell barbecues for - the bottoms were filled with shredded paper, and then more was tossed on top of pieces as they were added to the firing chambers. Once covered, the chemicals in the glaze have alternating reactions with the extreme heat, the drastic temperature drop, and the subsequent burning away of oxygen into carbon. I don't know the exact science, but it ends up looking pretty cool.
5. After a certain amount of time (perhaps 15 minutes or so?) remove the still warm pieces from their bed of shredded paper with heat resistant gloves and place to completely cool on a heat resistant surface. The fire needs time to burn down, and opening the lid of the chamber too soon could cause a different final product. You can see in the pictures below that we used a series of bricks stacked along the ground as our cooling area.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, there are ways to seal the inside of raku pieces to make them watertight. Since the ideal raku temperature isn't hot enough to vitrify the clay, I used a water sealant designed for concrete, brick, and terra cotta. All of the raku (and horsehair, obvara, and pit fire) works in the shop are absolutely watertight, so they're great for live flower displays. Now that you know more about the process of raku, you can brag about how your raku vase is one of a kind, and you can describe the numerous steps involved in the making of it.
Next time we'll talk about horsehair and obvara, two other firing techniques we used over this lovely August weekend one year ago. | http://www.everydaystoneware.com/news/2015/8/2/alternative-firings-part-i-raku |
A little bit about the Pot Crafting…
My ceramic work is influenced by aesthetics and potters’ work from the turn of the century Arts & Crafts Movement. Some of the potters I have admired are Adelaide Alsop Robineau, Artus and Anna Van Briggle, Arthur Baggs, Frederick Hurten Rhead, Mary Louise McLaughlin, William Grueby, George Ohr (my personal favorite), and countless other potter’s work as well as pottery companies and schools from the same time period including Marblehead, Teco-Gates, Fulper, Pewabic, Hampshire, Rookwood, Weller, Newcomb College and Alfred University.
Each pot I make is hand made and one of a kind. Most are vases, hand thrown on the wheel and almost always altered … I can never leave well enough alone! I rarely start a pot intent on its design. I prefer to let creative juice flow after the pot is made, studying the shape inspiring intuitive design suited to the vessel.
The design implementation can be carving, incising, reshaping, removing clay like a window, or adding clay for a handle or an architectural element. I may add clay to form stylized flower shapes or use faux-bois (false wood) techniques attaching twigs as handles or branches on the surface of the piece. I also enjoy experimenting with triptych’s, borrowed from the Japanese wood block print formats, where I create three panels around a vase each framing different views of the same subject.
Some of my work is hand built, as example using an antique cast iron heat register grate that was used in heating ducts of old homes the heavy cast iron grate is pressed into a slab of soft clay transferring the design of the grate into the clay. I playfully think of the process as a “brutalist art technique” due to the deep pressing of cast iron into soft clay and also by the original design. The handsomely designed grates from over a hundred years ago are now “re-invented” into what I call “Bungalow Trays.” A design to be enjoyed once again in it’s new great grate tray form that make great conversation pieces. Isn’t that great?
Bungalow Tray
Glazing of my work before the second firing incorporates multiple techniques, including controlled layering of multiple sprayed glazes. A careful layering of certain glazes melting in the kiln firing will create a flowing or drip effect sometimes with a subtle crystalline or sparkle effect. My viewpoint is the “movement” in the flow and drip of the glaze gives the vessel a feeling of “energy” and “life.”
Most of my work is in the green spectrum although other glaze colors are used. The glaze formulas are mixed from scratch and I design them to emulate matte or satin glazes used by potteries from the turn of the century “Arts & Crafts Movement.” The most famous green glaze was created by William Grueby of the Grueby Faience Company in Revere, Massachusetts in the late 1800’s. Many other potters then tried to mimic the famous “Grueby Green” as I do also well over 100 years later! My new art vases are substantially less expensive than a Grueby piece which at auction can be very pricey.
Grueby Faience Pottery
Most of the clay used is a buff or off-white stoneware, but at times porcelain or dark chocolate clay. Earlier work was gas fired (reduction) to cone 10, although now I am using an electric kiln (oxidation) fired to cone 6 or 7. Most of my work is marked with my initials, a “Roycroft Renaissance” mark which I am a juried member, the year in roman numeral, and the Gyldcraft Logo.
My work is primarily decorative art, sometimes called “non-functional” pottery and pairs well with the dark oak furniture or antique embroidered linens from the Arts and Crafts / Craftsman / Mission era. The vases can be used as decorative art alone, or will hold water for fresh flowers as the clay is vitrified during firing. Bowls or trays can be used for “dry” food like candy, cookies, sliced cheese or bread, but acidic or “wet” food may not be appropriate. | https://gyldcraft.com/process/ |
Tall ceramic kitchen utensil holder vase with fern impressions, pottery home decor vase
This tall ceramic vase or utensil holder was hand built by rolling out strips of stoneware clay and applying in a patchwork pattern around a cylinder form. Each piece was stamped with 2 kinds of fern stamps. The top edge is turned out slightly with the front edge lower than the back. The base spreads out for greater stability. After it was dry I rubbed the whole thing with a dark oxide stain and then wiped it down. The outside is unglazed to allow the dark stained areas to show. The inside is glazed brown with cream highlights. The clay is a combination of tans and browns for a varied look. About 11" tall in the back. The top is 4.5" diam and the base is about 5". This will hold water.
Non toxic glaze on the inside with an unglazed outside. Hand washing is recommended. Felt feet on the bottom provide table protection. This is a pretty container for your utensils by the stove, for dried arrangements in the fall or winter, tall stemmed flowers in spring and summer and it makes a dramatic display piece. The unglazed outside has a slightly rough texture and would be great in a rustic decor. | http://willowtreepotteryandgallery.com/products/tall-ceramic-kitchen-utensil-holder-vase-with-fern-impressions-pottery-home-decor-vase |
This piece is part of our sample sale due to minor imperfections (a repaired crack), as shown in the last photo.
A "matrimonio" (marriage) shaped clay vase handmade in the Pai Pai community of Baja, México. This style of vase is traditionally gifted to couples at their wedding in Pai Pai culture. The shape is meant to signify the union of two people. Featuring unique, marbled black markings from the ground-firing process. Intended for use with dry stems or as decorative conversation-starters.
Each vase is designed and handmade by Daria Mariscal in a remote town of northern Baja, México. Daria harvests and processes local clay, and shapes each vase by hand before burnishing, sun drying, and ground firing to finish. This pottery technique has been practiced by generations of Pai Pai members, an indigenous community in Baja pre-dating the Spanish settlement with currently less than 200 people. Daria speaks Pai Pai and Spanish.
Due to the handmade nature of the pieces, each one will vary slightly in size, shape, and appearance. | https://shopjavier.com/products/large-pai-pai-matrimonio-vase-sample-sale |
A silo (from the Greek σιρός – siros, "pit for holding grain") is a structure for storing bulk materials.
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A vase (/ˈvɑːz/, /ˈveɪs/, or /ˈveɪz/) is an open container, today often used to hold cut flowers.
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A drawer /drɔːr/ is a box-shaped container that fits into a piece of furniture in such a way that it can be drawn out horizontally to reach its contents.
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Container
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A flagon (/ˈflæɡən/) is a large leather, metal, glass or ceramic vessel, used for drink, whether this be water, ale, or another liquid.
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An ammunition box or cartridge box is a container designed for safe transport and storage of ammunition.
Olla
An olla is a ceramic jar, often unglazed, used for cooking stews or soups, for the storage of water or dry foods, or for other purposes.
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Kjell Olav A. Maldum (born 12 December 1962) is a Norwegian entrepreneur and business leader.
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Lock & Lock
Lock & Lock is a South Korean plastics manufacturer, headquartered in Seocho-Dong Seocho-Gu, Seoul Established in 1978, the Lock & Lock line of products has been highly successful in competing with better known global brands such as Ziploc, Tupperware, and Rubbermaid.
Crate
A crate is a large shipping container, often made of wood, typically used to transport or store large, heavy or awkward items. | https://studylib.net/flashcards/set/containers_16618 |
Muncie Pottery started production of art pottery in 1919 as the Muncie Clay Products Company. Muncie Pottery started as a subsidiary of the German-American Clay Company. Muncie Pottery like so many of the other American art pottery companies closed its doors as a victim of the depression in 1939.
This 8 3/4 inch tall 'Lovebirds' vase was designed by well known glass designer Reuben Haley. The lovebirds design was originally made famous by Lalique Crystal but Haley re-worked it for Muncie pottery. The rich green glaze over rose accents the design of the vase very well. Exceptionally crisp mold, in excellent original condition.
Exceptional vase in that it is undamaged, no chips, no cracks, no repairs, no scratches to glaze. FREE from crazing. Any non-perfections are from the firing/manufacturing process. The white spots are studio light reflections.
Authentic Muncie Pottery. All pictures are original and un-edited.
Height: 8 3/4", Base: 6 1/2" x 3 3/4" , Rim: 7 1/4" x 2 7/8" | https://thekingsfortune.com/products/muncie-pottery/muncie-pottery-1929-green-over-rose-lovebirds-figural-vase-193-9-haley-design |
These handmade porcelain vases entitled Colorful Confinement are all one-of-a-kind originals. This vase series was created during Covid 19 lockdown. Each creation has been hand-stained, hand-built, and high-fired at 1250° C. The firings are orchestrated to provoke controlled deformation and maximum transparency. The pieces shift and sway during the firing process creating absolutely unique organic forms.
About the Brand
American sculptor Luisa Maisel creates ceramic sculptures which draw upon references from art history, current events, and her American culture. Her work is inspired by her social environment and her desire to explore clay with symbolic meaning. Maisel’s series all research the concept of commemoration and the passage of time.
Maisel finds that working with clay provides great freedom of expression, as the material fascinates her with its complexity in its transformation from liquid to solid, from dirty to clean, raw to fired, soft to hard, and banal to sublime. The freedom in form and expression, the glaze painting and the multiple firings are a source of ceaseless intrigue.
Born and raised in New York, Maisel received a BFA in Fine Arts with a double major in graphic design and illustration in 1987. At the age of 24, she left for Paris where she spent the following years working as a graphic designer and illustrator while teaching at the Parsons School of Design. At the age of 28, Maisel turned to sculpting and clay making to consecrate her creative expression.
Originally inspired by Georges Jean-Clos and the French Masters, her interests shifted in 2001 when the Twin Towers fell.
Product Details
Designed and hand made by Luisa Maisel.
Product type: Vase
Material: Porcelain
Color: Multi-color (Click here to see the Luisa Maisel Vases)
Dimensions: (L 18 x W 17 x H 24) cm
Weight: 2.2 kg
Product care: To avoid scratching, do not use abrasive clothes, sponges, or detergents. Clean using a soft cloth.
Additional information:
* Comes with clear container to be inserted into the vase prior to adding water or flowers.
* Comes with white porcelain pedestal for proper display. | https://shop.citiesstore.com/products/glossy-bubble-gum-vase-br-l-18-x-w-17-x-h-24-cm-br-limited-edition |
Ella Bendrups - The Design Files | Australia's most popular design blog.
Today we visit an inspiring young creative who successfully changed tack, and is now focused on giving back.
Ceramicist and stylist Ella Bendrups invites us into her space at Melbourne’s Studio Local, taking us through her newest range of hand-crafted ceramics created using the ‘kurinuki’ clay carving technique.
A selection of various sized plates and bowls created through pinching or slumping soft slabs into moulds. Photo – Emily Weaving.
Melbourne ceramicist Ella Bendrups. Photo – Emily Weaving.
A Hewn vase in the making. Ella is carving the exterior of a new vase from a block of solid clay, once the exterior is finished, the piece will be left to harden for a few days before the interior is dug out. ‘These pieces highlight the maker’s marks on the clay, drawing out the texture of the base material, and are suitable for both functional and decorative use,’ she explains. Photo – Emily Weaving.
Ella’s inspiration board on display in her studio. Photo – Emily Weaving.
The ceramicist’s tools. ‘I poured small, deliberate ribbons of decorative glaze on the exterior of the form, allowing the surface texture of the clay to remain dominant,’ details Ella of her Hewn pieces. Photo – Emily Weaving.
Ancients Vase with Hewn pieces and sculptural trials in the background. ‘The surface texture of the vase was achieved by smooshing the wet clay with my thumb to create a weathered look,’ explains Ella. ‘I like that it almost looks as if it was discovered in an archaeological dig.’ Photo – Emily Weaving.
Ella in her space at Studio Local in Mebourne. Photo – Emily Weaving.
Hewn Vase, created using the kurinuki techinique, and featuring a vertical wave sliced into the front. ‘This technique allows you to capture frozen movements’ says Ella. Photo – Emily Weaving.
Ella’s Lunar Dinner and Side Plates. ‘One of my first designs, I still love the interplay between the milky glaze and chocolate clay body,’ she tells. Photo – Emily Weaving.
Ella Bendrups‘ interest in ceramics has been an organic evolution – from ceramics fan to ceramics student, and then onto building her own ceramics-based business over the past three years. The diligent 27-year-old studied Communication Design, Interior Design and Decoration at RMIT, before working as a stylist’s assistant. ‘This experience exposed me to many talented makers and inspired me to make pottery myself,’ says Ella, who subsequently honed her own skills through classes at Guild of Objects and Northcote Pottery Supplies.
After gaining confidence to explore her own personal style throughout 2015, Ella committed to her craft part-time in the spring of 2016. ‘I had received such positive feedback and encouragement from prop and food stylists, and others in the industry that I finally felt ready to put my work out there by launching an online store and selling at markets,’ the ceramicist explains. When she’s not making her own wares, Ella continues to assist stylists, such as Stephanie Stamatis. ‘I find that this helps spur on my own practice, as I am regularly exposed to some of the most talented people working in creative industries in Melbourne,’ Ella tells.
The level-headed young maker has recently been creating from a workspace at Studio Local in Northcote, where she has gained valuable experience and enjoyed the input from other residents. Ella also works from her little home workspace, hand-building and utilising pinching, as well as slab techniques. A prevailing colour palette of calm neutrals is considered, and employed to emphasise the texture and form of her ceramics.
On the other hand, the forms themselves emerge from more spur-of-the-moment decision making. ‘I have learned that I can best express myself through quick, yet decisive movements. I researched pottery pieces that I felt encompassed this spirit, and this lead me to the kurinuki,’ tells Ella, referring to a subtractive method where a solid block of clay is shaved and carved off to create a desired exterior form, much like working with stone. Ella has experimented with the kurinuki technique for her new series of Hewn Vessels.
Spurred on by the encouragement she’s received from other local makers, Ella is a community-minded maker. She has recently taken the leap into teaching, and is looking forward to sharing her craft through an upcoming series of workshops.
Ella Bendrups has teamed up with Stephanie and Sarah from Studio Local for a slab building Clay Study running on 17th of June. TDF readers who are interested in signing up can utilise the code TDFXCLAY.
Lovely use of clay. So different than what you usually think of with ceramics! Beautiful photos, too!
A new collection of delicate jewellery, inspired by a yearning to connect to the land.
From the tray that started it all to Tuareg jewellery, Brisbanian Dagmar Maini reflects on her path to woodcraft. | https://thedesignfiles.net/2017/06/ella-bendrups/ |
A vase (, , or ) is an open container. It can be made from a number of materials, such as ceramics , glass, non-rusting metals, such as aluminum, brass, bronze or stainless steel. Even wood has been used to make vases, either by using tree species that naturally resist rot, such as teak, or by applying a protective coating to conventional wood. Vases are often decorated, and they are often used to hold cut flowers. Vases generally have a similar shape. The foot or the base may be bulbous, flat, carinate, or another shape. The body forms the main portion of the piece. Some vases have a shoulder, where the body curves inward, a neck, which gives height, and a lip, where the vase flares back out at the top. Some vases are also given handles. Various styles and types of vases have been developed around the world in different time periods, such as Chinese ceramics and Native American pottery. In the pottery of ancient Greece "vase-painting" is the traditional term covering the famous fine painted pottery, often with many figures in scenes from Greek mythology. Such pieces may be referred to as vases regardless of their shape; most were in fact used for holding or serving liquids, and many would more naturally be called cups, jugs and so on. In 2003, Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize for his ceramics, typically in vase form.
For the locality situated in Värmland County in Sweden, see Väse.
A vase (/ˈvɑːz/, /ˈveɪs/, or /ˈveɪz/) is an open container. It can be made from a number of materials, such as ceramics , glass, non-rusting metals, such as aluminum, brass, bronze or stainless steel. Even wood has been used to make vases, either by using tree species that naturally resist rot, such as teak, or by applying a protective coating to conventional wood. Vases are often decorated, and they are often used to hold cut flowers.
Vases generally have a similar shape. The foot or the base may be bulbous, flat, carinate, or another shape. The body forms the main portion of the piece. Some vases have a shoulder, where the body curves inward, a neck, which gives height, and a lip, where the vase flares back out at the top. Some vases are also given handles.
Various styles and types of vases have been developed around the world in different time periods, such as Chinese ceramics and Native American pottery. In the pottery of ancient Greece "vase-painting" is the traditional term covering the famous fine painted pottery, often with many figures in scenes from Greek mythology. Such pieces may be referred to as vases regardless of their shape; most were in fact used for holding or serving liquids, and many would more naturally be called cups, jugs and so on. In 2003, Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize for his ceramics, typically in vase form.
There is a long history of the form and function of the vase in almost all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are all the artistic evidence left from vanished cultures. In the beginning stages of pottery, the coiling method of building was the most utilized technique to make pottery. The coiling method is the act of working the clay into long strings that a cylindral shape that later become smooth walls.
Garden vases are usually V-shaped but they can also be cylindrical or bowl-shaped. They are usually made of ceramic or, today, plastic. Examples are the Torlonia Vase and the Medici Vase in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
The Torlonia vase is an arrangement or structure that resembles that of a blossomed flower. This vase was made using a relief structure called the high frieze technique. The high frieze technique exemplifies exceptional use of perfect details carved with a Bacchic symposium. The symposium usually has bearded satyrs' masks on the vase and three handles on the rim and also stands on three legs that resemble legs of a lion. The Torlonia vase was the largest in diameter of known antique vases for centuries until the Tazza Albani vase came along. Before being in possession of the Princess Torlonia in Rome, the vase passed through many important ancient times and former ages.
The Medici vase originated in Athens in the later half of 1st century AD. This vase is made out of marble and is shaped like a mixing bowl. The first use for this type of vase was for garden decoration for the Roman market. The place of the Medici Vase in the Western canon of Greek and Roman remains may be gauged by its prominent position in the composed views or capricchie that were a specialty of the Roman painter Giovanni Paolo Panini, to pick the outstanding example.
19th century Peking glass vase in Imperial Yellow. | https://b2b.partcommunity.com/community/knowledge/en/detail/1779/Vase |
Asked by: Herculano Amoroucoasked in category: General Last Updated: 29th April, 2020
What is the meaning of flower vase?
Regarding this, what does a vase symbolize?
vase < Julieta > The vase represents an immersive world, or the technology that surrounds us that we have created. It also stands as the maternal symbol; in this regard it is positive because it is about nourishment. The vase can hold things inside as well. It will have a texture that moves like water.
what is the spelling of flower vase? Correct spelling for the English word "flower vase" is [flˈa??? vˈ?ːz], [flˈa?? vˈ?ːz], [f_l_ˈa?_? v_ˈ?ː_z]] (IPA phonetic alphabet).
Considering this, what is the use of flower vase?
A flower vase is an opened decorative container commonly made of ceramic materials such as clay or glass for ornamentation purposes. Modern vases are widely decorated and used to hold artificial flowers. The purpose of flower vase is still as important as it used to be in the ancient time.
What is another word for vase? | https://askinglot.com/what-is-the-meaning-of-flower-vase |
Ground-fired decorative clay vase handmade in Baja, Mexico. The black markings are a result of the firing process, making each piece entirely unique.
This beautiful pottery is made by Daria Mariscal in a very remote town in Baja, Mexico. Daria harvests and hand-processes the local clay and ground-fires the pieces, as generations of her female ancestors have before her. Due to the handmade nature of the pieces, each one will vary slightly in size, shape, and appearance.
These are very limited edition pieces; we have only a few and do not re-stock often. | https://www.theartesanal.com/products/copy-of-pai-pai-tall-ceramic-vase |
Since this school year began at the Western Australian International School System, we have had opportunities to explore pottery and learn how to make simple crafts.
Entering the school pottery studio, we were immediately attracted to the pretty little cups and small flower vases placed neatly on the wooden shelves. Opposite the shelves are the pottery tables which the whole class can gather around. Firstly, we played the roles of workers and started to gain experience working with clay and turntables in order to create raw products. It is essential to leave the clay at the center of the turntable. It looked easy to do at first glance, however, practicing proved to be challenging. We were originally supposed to make a cup but then it became a vase! We found it difficult to keep the clay in the shape which we wanted. The work required a combination of attention and skill. The clay needed drying before we could start to decorate our products in the following session.
Not only does learning how to make a pottery product help us understand the hard work of the pottery artisans, but it also enhances our skillfulness and creativity. Through the work which requires high concentration, our management skills could be ameliorated. After the lesson, we felt more relaxed and recovered after studying. Particularly, it is the handmade pottery products that brought a lot of joy. In the next classes, I hope I can discover how to make a beautiful ceramic shape.
Nguyen Hoang Dai Bich Nhu – Student of Class 4B
Pottery is a kind of folk art created by the skillful hands of a potter. Fortunately, the Western Australia International School System has organized pottery lessons not only during the field trip but also in the curriculum. Therefore, we can experience pottery making and become more appreciative of this art form.
On the field trip, we saw the process of making pottery from skilled craftsmen and knew that making a complete product requires a lot of effort and enthusiasm. Soon afterward, we were directly exposed to two stages of creating and drawing patterns at school. At first, we learned to use clay and turntables with rotating movements, while clawing to create products. Despite the guidance from our teachers, it is not easy for us to do this as it is very difficult to control the pottery on the turntable. We had to try many times before the first product was created. After the lesson, our hands and feet were covered with clay, but it could be considered a type of skin care.
. After that, we started to draw our own pictures on our product such as flowers, chickens, and ducks.
I love the art of making pottery. It is very interesting because one needs skillfulness and patience. The pottery studio is the place to rest and create new things. Through the activities, the whole class becomes closer and we are relaxed after class.
Bành Bảo Trân – Lớp 5C
Have you ever made a cup, a flower vase, or a meaningful pottery product for use or give before? Let me share with you information about the fascinating pottery workshops at my school, the Western Australia International School System.
It came as a surprise for me to attend a cozy and elegant classroom. This is an ideal place for me and my classmate to enhance our creative and passionate love of art. We have experienced how to control our movement with the turntables to form subtle curves, how to be patient, and how to decorate the background pattern.
Pottery classes help me discover my own creativity and high concentration as well as release study pressure. I did make some pottery products for my teachers for Teachers’ Day and for my parents. | https://wass.edu.vn/en/discovering-the-interesting-story-about-pottery-at-school |
The Sculpt me dear ceramic vase is sculpted by hand and shaped into a soft organic form inspired by my iconic leather torsos. It can be used for floral arranging or as a sculptural element for your home. The clay used for this piece is stoneware clay, black matte glazed.
PLEASE NOTE
– Each vase is unique and hand made, therefore they can vary a bit from each other in shape and look.
– The vase is watertight.
For any questions regarding the product, please contact: [email protected]
APPROX. MEASUREMENTS AND WEIGHT:
Circumference: 50 cm
Height: 25 cm
Width: 15 cm
Weight: 5kg
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You can use product metafields to assign content to this tab that is unique to an individual product. Use tabs to highlight unique features, sizing information, or other sales information. | https://www.abomestudio.com/collections/sculptures/products/sculpt-me-dear-ceramic-vase-3 |
Newcomb College Pottery is well-known for its distinctive markings, which represent the Newcomb College trademark, the year, the clay and glaze, and the decorator. Although this mark was not used until 1897, the prominent mark on the ceramics was "NC" with the letter "N" inside a bigger "C." This was later changed to simply "NC."
The Newcomb College name comes from a family of New Englanders who were wealthy landowners. The college was founded in 1847 by Mary Newcomb, a philanthropist, as a school for poor girls. In 1857, it became coeducational. It was named for its founders but did not accept men until 1969 when Drew University decided to admit women students. Even though it is now coed, it still maintains its relationship with Women's College of Drew University, allowing female undergraduates to study art history and political science while male students study biology and chemistry.
Newcomb pottery is famous for its large decorative designs created using black enamel. These marks include flowers, trees, birds, and even people. Sometimes these decorations are referred to as "black paintings" because they use such dark colors.
During World War II, when wood and coal were scarce, Newcomb pottery was one of the few sources for fuel oil, which was needed to fire buildings for heat and light.
The studio where the item was manufactured, the potter who crafted the piece, and the signature of the artist who adorned it are all frequent markings. A form number and clay type identifier may also be supplied. You can use reference books to assist you recognize strange markings. There are three general categories of studio pottery marks: tool marks, manufacturing marks, and decoration marks.
Tool marks indicate that a particular area of the vessel was treated with more force or pressed down harder than others. This might happen when forming certain shapes like shells or drums. The tool used to make the mark could be visible on the surface of the pot as a dark spot. Other tools that might leave a mark include chisels, gouges, and cutting blades. Manufacturing marks are made during the firing process or while the pot is being painted. They can tell you something about the type of fuel used in the furnace and how it was controlled. Decoration marks are those made after the pot has been fired. These could include paint brushes, pen nibs, and carbonized wood fragments found inside the mouth of the pot after it has been placed in the fire.
Markings can help date studio pottery if used in conjunction with other information such as material analysis and chemical testing for toxins. Tools used by different makers often produce unique patterns of indentations in their work.
Look for a design on the bottom of your piece of pottery that may reveal its provenance, even if the potter's or factory's name is missing. Indentations at the bottom of the item, which allow it to rest flat, might further indicate its provenance. Look also for words written inside the rim, usually after the glaze has been fired. These words will often tell you what kind of clay was used, where it was found, and sometimes even who made it.
Clay types can be identified by color, texture, or both. If you are not sure whether or not a particular type of clay was used, have several pieces of pottery analyzed by a professional ceramics laboratory. The lab should be able to tell you what type of clay was used based on its physical properties alone, if no other information is available. For example, if the piece is thin walled but has a thick body, it was probably made from some type of red clay. On the other hand, if it is thick walled with thin bodies, it could have been made from white or gray clay.
Potters' marks are designs etched into the surface of their pottery for identification purposes. They vary in size and complexity and can be simple geometric shapes or more elaborate pictures. Some potters' marks are meant to imitate natural objects such as trees or flowers while others are unique designs.
That gorgeous substance known as Maine "blue" clay is scooped out of our back yard at Wayne Village Pottery. This type of clay was also employed by early redware potters, and we love carrying on their heritage of making functional, inexpensive, and attractive handmade pottery. For our Christmas open house, we started crafting decorations and sculptures.
Maine blue clay is a type of soft, white clay found in large deposits near the surface of the earth in southern Maine. It is particularly suitable for making decorative items because it takes a paint-like color when fired.
Wayne Village Pottery uses this clay in all of its pieces, from plates to vases to ornaments. The color of the clay changes depending on what kind of decoration you put on it: gray if you only dye the clay before firing it, black if you only burnish it after firing, and bright colors if you apply both methods.
Clay has many different properties that determine how it will mold or shape-trap when wet and how it will fire when burned. The type of clay we use at Wayne Village is a moist, heavy clay that plants like because it soaks up water like a sponge. When made into objects with handles or tools, the clay's plasticity allows you to work with it. Just remember not to throw too hard or press on the piece too hard; otherwise, you'll damage the vessel. | https://www.texturatrading.com/how-do-i-know-if-i-have-newcomb-pottery |
After careful consideration and for the health and well-being of our associates and guests, the Inn at Bay Harbor is temporarily ceasing resort operations due to the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak and in an effort to reduce the spread of the virus. The closure is in place through at least April 13.
Hotel guests will be departing by checkout at 11am on Tuesday, March 17, and the resort will fully shutdown at that time.
If you have lodging reservations in the next few weeks, please know that our representatives will be working diligently to contact you to refund or reschedule your stay. If you would like to contact us with any questions or concerns, please call 833.218.4315 between the hours of 8am-6pm.
Thank you for your understanding.
We look forward to seeing you soon and making memories later this spring, summer, and beyond!
COVID-19 CLEANING PROTOCOLS AND OPERATIONAL CHANGES
We are closely monitoring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization's statements regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and following guidelines from these agencies and our local health department. The wellbeing of our guests and associates is of paramount importance, and we are taking the following actions and precautions for your safety:
Our Commitment to Cleanliness:
We take standards for hygiene and cleanliness very seriously. On a daily basis, we are working to ensure we meet the latest guidance on hygiene and cleaning. Our resort's health and safety measures are designed to address a broad spectrum of viruses, including COVID-19, and include everything from handwashing hygiene and cleaning product specifications to guest room and common area cleaning procedures.
Specific steps Inn at Bay Harbor, Autograph Collection is taking include:
Associate Health, Safety and Knowledge: Hotel associates - and their own health, safety and knowledge - are essential to an effective cleaning program. Here are some ways we're supporting them:
· Hand Hygiene: Proper and frequent handwashing is vital to help combat the spread of viruses. In our daily meetings, our teams are reminded that cleanliness starts with this simple act. It's important for their health and that of our guests. We are enforcing frequent handwashing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are unavailable.
• Ongoing Training and Etiquette: In addition to training on housekeeping and hygiene protocols, associates are also being provided real-time COVID-19 awareness training, and training on proper health etiquette.
• Feeling Ill: Associates are encouraged to stay home if they feel ill or are taking care of an ill family member. Inn at Bay Harbor has also implemented a COVID-19 sick pay policy.
Cleaning Products and Protocols: Our resort uses cleaning products and protocols that are effective against viruses, including:
· Guest Rooms: We use cleaning and disinfecting protocols to clean rooms after guests depart and before the next guest arrives, with particular attention paid to high-touch items.
• Public Spaces: We have increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting in public spaces, with a focus on the counter at the front desk, elevators and elevator buttons, door handles, public bathrooms and room keys.
• Back of House: In the spaces where associates work "behind the scenes," we are increasing the frequency of cleaning and focusing on high-touch areas like associate entrances, locker rooms, laundry rooms, and staff offices.
Operational Changes: Our resort has implemented changes to our daily resort operations in order to minimize the spread of illness, including:
· Food Service: We have halted buffet service, and will only be serving off the menu for breakfast in The Sagamore Room
• Transportation Services: We have suspended valet parking and shuttle service
We appreciate the opportunity to serve you.
Thank you, | https://www.innatbayharbor.com/travel-information-covid-19 |
Polynesian Hotel - Assistant Director of Housekeeping
The team member on this position will be responsible for scheduling, training, reviews and all aspects of Housekeeping and Laundry. Help the Director of Housekeeping handle all guest and owners concerns and problems. Inspector of rooms for cleanliness, maintenance and inventory of the company.
Responsibilities:
1. Must have at least three years of experience on a supervisory role.
2. Must know how to do all Supervisor responsibilities and know all the employees in housekeeping responsibilities’.
3. Must know how to use a computer
4. Develop, document & guidelines that set & govern all standards of cleanliness
5. Control all housekeeping keys and control Lost & Found
6. Works together with all Department Managers and Staff
*Bonus - $250 after 30 days of employment and $250 after Labor Day if employed still. | https://easyapply.co/a/eb996cde-ab43-465d-aa1b-530ea7035b10 |
Description:
Reporting: The Head Housekeeper reports to the Hotel Manager regarding vessel operations onboard.
Direct Reports: Assistant Housekeeper (if applicable), Housekeeping and Laundry Supervisors (if applicable), Laundryman, Cabin Stewards/ess, Utility Hotel cleaners
Responsibilities
- Responsible for the overall cleanliness and maintenance of all passenger staterooms, public areas, concessionaire facilities, offices, and staff and crew facilities.
- Provide training for all housekeeping areas, as per corporate guidelines and ensure implementation. Provide guidance, coaching and discipline as needed.
- Maintain staterooms and suites, in good condition, to meet corporate standard as per operational policy.
- Maintain all housekeeping assigned public areas in good condition, in combination with other departments.
- Achieve passenger comment rating to meet or exceed targets. Passenger comments to be reviewed for respective areas and take appropriate follow up action.
- Maintain all laundry areas (main laundry, self service laundry (if applicable), and crew laundry), in good operating condition, as per company standards and directives if required to correct any deficiencies.
- Coordinate baggage handling upon embarkation and disembarkation. Arrange baggage tagging and be fully involved with baggage handling operations supervising assisting crew.
- Maintain all crew areas your department has been assigned to, such as public toilets, showers etc. in good condition and provide related service, as well follow up on maintenance.
- Comply with public health regulations (USPH) and provide guidance, training and monitoring towards these, in order to meet sanitary standards.
- Conduct daily walk through of all your areas of responsibility, including daily passenger cabin inspections (spot checks).
- Ensure daily short communication or short meeting with your housekeeping staff.
- Maintain housekeeping department within budgetary guidelines.
- Maintain housekeeping departmental tangible assets (equipment, supplies).
- In charge of ordering all HK supplies, including chemicals for laundry, together in coordination with the Inventory Controller.
- Ensure that all technical deficiencies related to your department are taken care off in a timely manner and ensure that proper information is forwarded to reception in order to log it correctly. Follow up to ensure any corrective actions have been taken to resolution.
- Submit reports in a timely manner which are either for hotel on board or shore side.
- Ensure that all procedures of ISM code related to your department are implemented and followed.
- Prepare handover report for embarking Chief Housekeeper as per corporate guideline and provide it upon embarkation.
- Conduct weekly walks/inspection of crew cabin, crew area, public lounges or guest staterooms and together with Captain or Hotel Manager or whenever it is requested.
- Represent Housekeeping department in all meeting in which attendance is required Effectively supervise Housekeeping personnel, providing ongoing coaching, guidance, training and correction, through motivation and demonstration.
- Conduct and/or approve quarterly and end of contract evaluations of all Housekeeping department staff.
- Maintain accurate and up-to-date recordkeeping, to include but not limited to: Guest stateroom Checklist, Public room/stateroom inspections and crew cabin inspection reports, and all sanitation related reports or logs as required.
- Maintain a clean and safe workplace, with emphasis on employee health and fire/chemical safety. Ensure that all chemicals in your department are stored handled according to company policy and MSDS.
- Enforce Hotel operation policies and ensure that maintenance of all assigned areas is in compliance with USPH or other health standards.
- Demonstrate professionalism and be a good role model for subordinates
- Interact with the guest and employee in positive manner.
- Understand the job duty and responsibilities.
- Responsible and accountable for special projects or assignments presented by the Hotel Manager.
- Every Hotel Officer shall possess a certificate of competency of Lifeboatman.
Working Hours
- 24 hours/day on duty when required.
Requirements:
he following courses and/or certificates are mandatory:
- STCW
The following courses and/or certificates are required or desired: | https://www.cruiseshipjob.com/mvc/j2998/CMI-Leisure-Management-jobs-Head-Housekeeper |
Main activities and responsibilities My responsibilities as Head Housekeeper included all duties of the housekeeping operation and cleanliness levels in all areas of the property, as well as maintaining and implementing cleaning procedures for all assigned rooms, common areas, hallways, and other locations at the facility. I am in charge of short and long term planning and the management of the hotels Housekeeping operations As such I can develop and recommend the budget, labor cost plans and objectives and manages within those approved plans. Other duties include staff training, inter-department communications, and staff scheduling.
Main activities and responsibilities As Assistant Housekeeping Supervisor I was given the responsibility for upkeep of housekeeping and laundry inventory, as well as teaching employees the importance of greeting guests and courteously solving their requests. I oversaw the inspection program which was consistently maintained by inspecting different rooms daily. I also helped assure that all safety and security policies and procedures were followed. I worked well with all other departments.
Principal subjects / occupational skills covered My principle studies included: Basic Business Communication and Correspondence, Business in Management, Corporate Finance, and Economics. Secondary studies included algebra, art history, and photography.
Social skills and competences I can provide a superior ability to effectively interact with people of diverse socioeconomic, cultural, disability, and ethnic backgrounds. I possess clear concise written and verbal communication skills in my native tongue and the English language. I have excellent organizational, interpersonal and administrative skills. I am also very able to coach and counsel employees to reflect service standards and procedures as well as teaching, supervising, and mentoring multilingual and multicultural staff.
Organisational skills and competences I am highty capable of purchasing linens and housekeeping supplies and am comfortable working closely with vendors to assure proper pricing, delivery, and maintenance. I also possess effective scheduling skills and am capable at Insuring proper staffing levels for customer service goals. I have been given the responsibility of ensuring that OSHA and ADA policies are strictly adhered to. I also have experience with turndown service, special needs of VIP Guests, foreign dignitaries, etc.
Technical skills and competences I have a high knowledge of purchasing linens and housekeeping supplies and try to I stay educated on all the latest housekeeping and laundry technology.
Computer skills and competences I possess an advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Outlook Express, and Word. I have also been thoroughly trained in hotel management software, and can train employees in same.
Other skills and competences I have a thorough knowledge of progressive hotel rooms housekeeping and management. I possess a high energy level and an entrepreneurial spirit and consider myself a skilled motivational leader, and an effective communicator. I am very effective at providing exceptional customer service and ability to improve the bottom line. I exhibit a service oriented style with professional presentations skills.
Additional information References available upon request. | https://www.examplesof.com/cv/executive_housekeeper.html |
We are looking for a Housekeeping Supervisor to lead our team of Cleaners and ensure we provide excellent customer service.
Housekeeping Supervisor responsibilities include organizing employee shifts, training and motivating team members and checking private and public areas for tidiness. To be successful in this role, you should have a good understanding of sanitation regulations and team management abilities.
Ultimately, you will help ensure our daily housekeeping operations run smoothly and that guests and the employees are satisfied.
Responsibilities
- Train housekeepers on cleaning and maintenance tasks;
- Oversee staff on a daily basis;
- Check Showrooms, Food & Beverage Outlets, Office Areas, storages and other company spaces for cleanliness;
- Schedule shifts and arrange for replacements in cases of absence;
- Establish and educate staff on cleanliness, tidiness and hygiene standards;
- Train the staff on making bedding and cleaning carpets according to the recognized standards
- Motivate team members and resolve any issues that occur on the job;
- Monitor and replenish cleaning products stock;
- Participate in large cleaning projects as required;
- Ensure compliance with safety and sanitation policies in all areas.
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Requirements and skills:
- Work experience as a Housekeeping Supervisor or similar role in a hotel;
- Hands-on experience with cleaning and maintenance tasks for large organizations;
- Ability to use industrial cleaning equipment and products;
- Excellent organizational and team management skills;
- Flexibility to work various shifts, including evenings and weekends;
- Job Type: Full-time
- Ability to commute/relocate: | https://gulfjobsblog.com/housekeeping-supervisor/ |
The Front of House Manager is responsible for the day-to-day operation and management of the restaurant. They are responsible for supervising front of house staff (Servers, Bartenders, Host/Hostess. Although this position has direct responsibilities to the Front of the House, the person in this role may be required to provide guidance to all team members and understand the operation and processes of the back of the house and fill in when needed.
People:
• Ensures proper staffing structure by recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and evaluating the skills of each staff member and utilizing them where most beneficial in accordance with their indicated availability.
• Manages team including scheduling-assigning work areas, directing, providing performance feedback, coaching, and discipline.
• Responsible for ongoing staff development. Identifying training needs, recording attendance, scheduling refreshers, ensuring all staff are in compliance.
• Communicates to management to ensure effective and efficient operations without issue
• Effectively builds trust and respect among staff members and fellow management by providing clear and honest communication and feedback.
• Leads by example. Always assist the staff members, never ask them to complete task that you wouldn't complete or don't complete on a regular basis. Assist when necessary including taking out garbage, scrubbing floors, doing dishes, cleaning restrooms, etc. Don't leave all the grunt work for the staff. Pitch in and be a team and someone others want to follow and learn from.
• Evaluates the quality, care and morale of the staff and strives to improve these areas through solid communication, care with schedule-writing, work group leadership, etc.
Financial Responsibilities:
• Responsible for achieving or exceeding the written restaurant budgets for the location (i.e., alcohol & beverage cost, drink efficiencies, labor cost and direct front of house expenses).
• Sets operational goals and follow-up plans for the location. Direct and hold all team members accountable for those goals.
• Assists in implementation and maintain front of house systems.
Assists in maintaining current front of house schedules, staffing templates, team member files, ordering and production targets, etc.
• Ensures compliance with inventory procedures.
Operation:
• Oversee all opening & closing duties are completed correctly and that cleanliness, organization, & maintenance are maintained
• Responsible for daily deposits, and the correct operation of the POS systems
• Balancing of all daily and nightly cash drawers and POS
• Inventory and maintenance of par levels for front of house
• Providing excellent customer service to guests and excellent leadership to employees
• Enforce and monitor all health, safety, and sanitation standards in their area
• Handle guest complaints according to company guidelines
• Work closely and continuously communication with the Kitchen Supervisor to provide a seamless experience
• Responsible for quality assurance of products leaving their outlets
• Maintains service quality standards for the restaurant.
• Oversees all phases of front of house supply procurement, production and service, including, inventory and ordering, storage and rotation, drink preparation, recipe adherence, presentation, and service and production time standards
• Conducts daily checks, drink reviews and drinks of the day.
• Ensures that clear feedback is provided to the entire team, kitchen team and management.
• Monitors all Commitment to Service/Mystery Guest scores, support staff visitation notes, etc. Follows up with corrective action plan.
• Responsible for managing on-going repairs, maintenance, programs, etc.
• Conducts weekly internal audits on housekeeping, safety, sanitation and facility to improve restaurant standards of front of house team and to correct deficiencies on a timely basis.
• Ensures the cleanliness and organization of the restaurant by maintaining specified standards, geared toward perfect scores on Health Department audits, and training staff on proper sanitation guidelines.
• Ensures staff is well versed on beverage and liquor types, sanitization, proper supply handling, storage practices, etc., through proper training and supervision
Additional Info
Additional
Job Requirements
Qualifications
* High School Diploma/GED
* Additional education or degree in a Hospitality related field preferred
* 1-3 years supervisory experience, with at least 1 high customer volume experience
* Servsafe training or passing and up to date prior to hire.
* Experience using POS systems
* Basic to intermediate MS Word and Excel skills
* Superior organizational, prioritizing, multi-tasking skills with exceptional attention to detail
* Must be able to communicate both written and verbally and in public presentations
* Must be knowledgeable of meal service patterns of children zero to five years old.
* Must have proven, successful interpersonal relationship skills to maintain effective and satisfactory working relationships with intra-department and inter-department team, vendors, clients, visitors, and contractors
* Ability to follow oral and written instructions with the ability to read, interpret, and present information efficiently and effectively.
* Must be able to accurately audit records and ensure compliance with written or verbal guidelines.
* Ability to take initiative, multi-task and work well/maintain positive composure under pressure.
* High standards of personal hygiene and personal appearances
* Ability to be on feet for several hours at a time
Additional Information
Other Duties
Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice. | https://www.snagajob.com/job-seeker/jobs/job-details.aspx?postingid=42572923&oq=server&item=16&searchid=21f2a36c-128f-119a-13c6-d0466c62a1e6&src=title |
Benchmark’s company culture is central to our management philosophy. The company’s stated purpose is “to provide an entrepreneurial environment where determined people dare to create, share, and build futures.
To be the “benchmark” by which all others are judged takes passion, courage, and dedication. We invite you to explore our extraordinary offering of unique opportunities, all with a common goal of providing an unforgettable journey.
Job Description Summary:The Room Attendant is responsible to ensure that standards of cleanliness in assigned guest rooms are achieved and maintained on a consistent basis to provide the highest level of guest satisfaction in cleanliness and service, within established time limitations.
Job Description:
- Keep work cart orderly and properly stocked at all times.
- Inspect room linens before placing in rooms and return below standard pieces to Housekeeping.
- Proper utilization of equipment, supplies and guest amenities.
- Thorough cleanliness and sanitation of guest bathrooms.
- Daily changing of soiled linens on beds and remaking beds following the property standards and those set forth in the Green Program.
- Thorough cleanliness of rooms, balconies and room furnishings.
- Constant awareness of safety hazards, (i.e. broken glass, frayed electrical cords, leaks, broken locks, and suspicious persons) and report to Floor Supervisor or the Housekeeping Office. Follow all training procedures set forth in the Bloodborne Pathogens program.
- Strict follow through on lost and found procedures (for example anything found in rooms that are vacant must be turned into Housekeeping Office directly).
- No articles should ever be removed from occupied rooms.
- Absolute respect for guests’ property should always be exercised.
- Practice safety standards at all times.
- Responsible care of equipment.
- Reports to work on time and according to posted schedule, to maintain accurate time records and follows proper standards for issuance of rooms.
- Remain alert, courteous and helpful to the guests and co-workers at all times. | https://jobs.appcast.io/benchmark-the-equinox-golf-resort-spa/room-attendant-equinox-golf-resort-spa/18106536568 |
Qualities: Well Organized, Personable, Willingness to Learn, Mature, Responsible, Team Player, Punctual.
Job Summary:
The Housekeeping Houseperson provides service to hotel guests and fellow housekeepers. The Housman is responsible to ensure that standards of cleanliness in assigned areas are achieved and maintained on a consistent basis to provide the highest level of guest satisfaction in cleanliness and service. This position supports the Housekeepers and maintains the elevator landings, hallways and guest floors of the hotel. The Housekeeping Houseperson will adhere to all policies and procedures of Ace Staffing. Adherence to all unique local hotel policies is also required. The Houseperson is expected to work independently under the direction of kitchen management and the local Ace supervisor.
Duties may include but are not limited to the following items:
- Able to perform repetitive work.
- Maintain the cleanliness of assigned guest floors, including high dusting of walls, vacuuming, mopping, polishing, cleaning of multiple surfaces, artwork and window interiors.
- Clean and polish guest and service elevator door tracks.
- Removal of marks on hallway wallpaper, service doors and other unpainted surfaces.
- Clean vending machine and ice room areas.
- Assist housekeepers with heavy lifting and trash removal.
- Ensure linen closets are stocked with all guest room supplies and collateral.
- Maintain proper allotment of linens in linen closet.
- Responsible for removing trash and soiled linens from Housekeeper carts throughout the day.
- Responsible for cleanliness of line closets in assigned areas, including sweeping and mopping.
- Clean stairwells, including sweeping and mopping of stairwell surfaces. Responsible for cleaning of stairwell light fixtures and high dusting.
- Responsible for the care of equipment and machines.
- Knowledge of safety rules for guests, employees, equipment and machinery.
- Report safety hazards, such as broken glass, frayed electrical cords, leaks, broken locks, and suspicious persons, and report to supervisor immediately.
- Follow all training procedures as set forth in the Bloodborne Pathogens Program.
- Able to lift, push and pull up to 50 lbs.
- Able to work all shifts and holidays.
- Able to multi-task in a high paced environment.
- Able to stand for long periods of time.
- Work in hot environment.
- Keep a clean and tidy workstation.
- Be able to self-motivate.
- Remain alert, courteous and helpful to guest and co-workers at all times.
- Able to follow written or verbal instructions.
- Respond to any reasonable task as assigned by Ace Supervisor, Housekeeping Leadership or Hotel Management.
Best Efforts:
At all times during the term of employment, Employee agrees to provide their best efforts and skills to perform the duties and tasks as outlined herein. Employee agrees to represent and project the Employer in the highest regard and represent themselves in a professional and ethical manner at all times. Employer is in the hospitality business, therefore, Employee is expected to provide a friendly, welcoming attitude and a high level of customer service to our hotel guests, our customers and fellow employees. | http://www.acehsg.com/jobs/housekeeping-houseman/ |
Following ongoing education curriculum reforms, labour relations debates across sectors are now focusing on unemployment and how industries prepare the younger generation to take up workplace roles.
Over the last few months, there has been quite some heated exchanges online between graduands, employers and policy makers. The crux of the issue is dwindling opportunities for provision of internship, lack of support during this period as well as expectations of those graduating from college.
For healthcare in particular, which unlike many other employment segments is a practical on-hands training, internships modelled around apprenticeships are our soul.
Across many countries, this non-mainstream learning approach is the norm. One gains more practical value during internship than in medical school. For this, doctors are lucky to be amongst the few whose internships are paid for.
Our profession was almost sacrosanct in terms of this guaranteed paid-internship. But recent changes in the population and employment dynamics means this may not be the case in the future, unless urgent action is taken.
More graduating doctors are leaving our medical schools every year, whereas fewer hospitals are providing the adequate facilities, resources and human personnel with ample contact time to hand-walk the new profession entrants. If not addressed, this has the potential for a generation of patchy internship training.
For medical associations and policy makers, the discussion is how to start planning to ensure the younger members get well- inculcated into the profession. This applies not just for doctors, but also the other health cadres like nurses, laboratory and pharmaceutical technologists.
It is not just the places, but also the mentoring personnel that is required. Increasing student numbers without a commensurate increase in training personnel is counterproductive. Case in point, the current teaching and referral hospitals shutdown and staff strikes.
Do patients in hospitals and health organisations have an obligation to ensure this lifelong supply chain is always maintained?
A similar situation was encountered in the hotel industry. In Kenya’s fledgling tourism industry days, maintaining a projected steady stream of professional hotel catering staff that meet international standards was a challenge. The proposal was to introduce training and catering levies. These guaranteed long term sustenance of training funding since it was a ring-fenced kitty.
To some extent, it helped address the concern until the industry had established adequate numbers. Though now consolidated under the Tourism Levy, it does serve as an example.
What lessons could the health sector learn from this approach?
The starting point is the non-profit hospitals that benefit from government trained personnel, but are tax exempt. Here is an opportunity for them to do good and guarantee future health workers to the ecosystem.
A shilling levy for every patient’s hospital visit could go to this fund. | https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/lifestyle/fitness/Levies-can-be-a-jab-in-the-arm-for-internship/4258372-5242852-format-xhtml-d36jdlz/index.html |
I’m torn when it comes to breaking the fourth wall in TV shows. It can be a fun, clever way to connect with the audience, but it can also break the fiction and rip you out of the carefully constructed world of the show.
Thankfully, some creators are smart enough to know how to pay homage to their favorite works of fiction without spoiling their own, several examples of which you can find in the latest video from the Screen Rant crew.
DON’T MISS: The 15 best Black Friday deals on HDTVs we’ve found so far
The first (and perhaps my personal favorite) comes from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan — an unabashed fan of Quentin Tarantino’s movies. There weren’t any props or cameos in the show, but instead, Gilligan named the two main characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, in reference to Mr. White and Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs.
I won’t spoil any of the other instances, but in case you need any more enticing, Game of Thrones, Arrested Development and House of Cards are all present in the video. If you’re a fan of any of these popular shows, you’re going to want to see if you caught the movie references the first time around: | https://bgr.com/general/movie-references-in-tv-shows/ |
This page is filled with Breaking Bad spoilers. Get out while you can.
In the final moments of Felina -- the series finale of Breaking Bad, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) storms the compound with a remote-controlled machine gun where Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) was imprisoned by neo-Nazis. But while Walt gets hit by a stray bullet during the carefully orchestrated massacre of Jack Welker’s gang, Jesse -- understandably hysterical -- is crying/laughing as he crashes his Chevrolet El Camino through the gate. With cops hot on his heels, the iconic post credits appear, drawing curtains to one of the best TV shows of all time.
This was six years ago. Even though the ending was so open-ended, fans of the show loved it to bits (Yes, we are looking at you Game of Thrones). But the fact that Jesse Pinkman’s future was still left open for imagination meant that show creator Vince Gilligan always had an opportunity to continue where he left off.
QUICK READ: Check out the trailer of El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie here
And that’s exactly what happened. After six years of Breaking Bad airing its final episode, we are finally getting a full feature-length film and going by the trailer and other previews we have seen so far, it looks like the film picks up at the exact moment where the show left us.
Gilligan in an interview with GQ shortly after Felina, said that the situation may not be as rosy as fans would have hoped for Pinkman. “The most likely thing, as negative as this sounds, is that they’re going to find this kid’s fingerprints all over this lab and they’re going to find him within a day or a week or a month. And he’s still going to be on the hook for the murder of two federal agents. But yeah, even though that’s the most likely outcome, the way I see it is that he got away and got to Alaska, changed his name, and had a new life.”
Whether Jesse will be able to dodge the cops in his El Camino and head to Alaska is something that we will find out in the movie. But Jesse isn’t the only Breaking Bad character that is making an appearance in the movie. Gilligan in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter had earlier mentioned that “more than 10 familiar characters” was going to show up in the movie. So, before you actually get to watch El Camino on Netflix this weekend (or tonight), let’s take a look at some of the most significant characters from the show and what actually happened to them before the events of El Camino: A Breaking Bad movie. | https://www.gqindia.com/entertainment/content/everything-about-breaking-bad-show-its-characters-plot-before-you-watch-el-camino-movie-on-netflix |
The Walking Dead (AMC, Sunday 9:00 p.m.) — After the gut punch at the end of the mid-season finale, the survivors are surely going to be bowed as they try to keep on moving. Are they going to follow the course of the comic and head toward Washington? Will their fellow survivors continue to pose as great a risk as the walkers? Will another character from the core cast die? We’re finally going to get some answers in the mid-season premiere, hopefully.
Better Call Saul (AMC, Sunday 10:00 p.m.) — At long last, the gritty origin story of Saul Goodman is ready to be told in the first part of a two-night premiere. Expectations are incomparably high for this spinoff, but hopefully Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan don’t overreach and instead give us a slowburn that gets the very best out of Bob Odenkirk and this character now that he’s the main attraction.
Constantine (NBC, Friday 8:00 p.m.) — An “ancient evil” has infested a hospital and Zed is worried that the source of her visions may not be what she thought it was.
Grimm (NBC, Friday 9:00 p.m.) — A Wesen-hired bounty hunter is stacking bodies, yo.
12 Monkeys (Syfy, Friday 9:00 p.m.) — This episode is called “Atari,” I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the early days of video gaming, but I’m not ready to let the crushing weight of logic crush even the slightest embers of hope that I have that I am wrong.
Black Sails (Starz, Saturday 9:00 p.m.) — Flint returns to Nassau. A steel drum celebration is enjoyed by all.
Austin City Limits (PBS, Saturday 9:00 p.m.) — The Austin episode of Sonic Highways was one of the best and now we get a chance to see The Foo Fighters play the iconic rock series.
Game Of Thrones: A Day in the Life (HBO, Sunday 7:30 p.m.) — We’re still a couple of months away from the return of Game of Thrones, but at least we’ve got this behind-the-scenes special to tide us over.
The Grammy Awards (CBS, Sunday 8:00 p.m.) — LL Cool J hosts the years biggest celebration of music and closeups of Taylor Swift dancing in the audience. Billy Ocean is not expected to perform despite the fact that we are now in the 30th anniversary year of the momentous pairing of Ocean, Michael Douglas, Danny Devito, and Kathleen Turner in the “When the Going gets Tough, the Tough get Going” video. Shameful.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO, Sunday 11:00 p.m.) — It feels like the first season just ended, but that doesn’t mean that the world isn’t in desperate need of Oliver’s mix of comedy and amateur journalism. Watch it live or wait a few hours for 80% of it to be on YouTube.
LATE NIGHT GUESTS: Andy Kindler on Letterman; Ed Sheeran joins John Mayer on The Late Late Show; and Jennifer Lopez and Anthony Mackie on Fallon. | https://uproxx.com/tv/weekend-preview-the-walking-dead-returns-better-call-saul-debuts-and-the-grammys-occur/ |
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Copyright 2022 © All rights Reserved. Iscrizione registro stampa n. cronol. 4548/2020 del 11/03/2020 RG n. 6985/2020 al Tribunale di Torino. | https://www.hypercritic.org/info/action/ |
CBS sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” concluded its three season run in 1967. It wasn’t until the first of three television movies, “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” in 1978, that the castaways finally leave the island. During a reunion cruise on the first Christmas after their rescue, fate intervenes and the seven castaways find themselves wrecked on the same island at the end of the film. In the next movie, “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island” in 1979, they are rescued once again and the Howells (Jim Backus and Natalie Schaffer) convert the island into a getaway resort…The Pulitzer prize was awarded to Larry McMurtry for “Lonesome Dove” in 1986…The Consumer News and Business Channel — also known as CNBC — launched in 1989…“Game of Thrones,” the most honored drama in Emmy history, debuted in 2011. In 2019, the show’s final season established a new record for most Emmy nominations received in the same year by any regular series with 32, breaking the 25-year-long record of 26 nominations established by ABC’s “NYPD Blue” in 1994…In 2012, the Sarah Michelle Gellar drama “Ringer” concluded after one season on The CW. It was originally in development at CBS.
Movies
Daffy Duck made his first appearance in the animated short “Porky’s Duck Hunt” in 1937…The astronauts on the troubled craft Apollo 13 safely returned to Earth in 1970. The movie version of its events, which starred Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon and directed by Ron Howard, was released in theaters in 1995.
Music
Paul McCartney’s first solo album, “McCartney,“ was released in 1970.
Automotive
The Ford Motor Company introduced the Mustang in 1964.
Celebrity Birthdays
Actor Sean Bean (“Game of Thrones”) is 63; actor Henry Ian Cusick (“Scandal”, “Lost”) is 55; actress Jennifer Garner is 50; Victoria Beckham is 48; actress Rooney Mara (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) is 37.
Did You Know?:
“Gilligan’s Island” was expected back for a fourth season on CBS (in 1967-68), but the decision not to cancel western “Gunsmoke” (which ultimately ran for another eight seasons) meant there was no room on the schedule for the inane sitcom…Sarah Michelle Gellar’s first regularly scheduled series role was in a syndicated teen drama called “Swan’s Crossing” that aired in first-run syndication for 13 weeks in 1992. The series chronicled the lives of a group of wealthy teenagers living in the seaside town of Swans Crossing. Gellar as Sydney Rutledge was the daughter of the town’s mayor, Margaret “Muffy” Rutledge. | https://programminginsider.com/this-day-in-history-sunday-april-17-2022/ |
Skylar may have had a terrible year on Breaking Bad, but Anna Gunn is on fire right now. The actress just won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama at the 2014 Emmys. Unlike most film and television award shows — including the Golden Globes and the Oscars, which only allow five nominees in all acting categories — the Emmys lets members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences choose between six thespians. The other women nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama were Christine Baranski for The Good Wife, Joanne Froggatt for Downton Abbey , Lena Headey for Game of Thrones , Christina Hendricks for Mad Men , and Maggie Smith for Downton Abbey. Gunn won in this category last year as well, and was nominated in 2012.
With so many nominees, it's rarely possible to be 100 percent sure who will take home the statue, though considering that this was the final year Breaking Bad was eligible, it would be a huge upset if its cast and crew didn't win most of their categories. Aaron Paul took home the male equivalent of Gunn's Emmy, Best Supporting Actor in a Drama, earlier in the evening.
We're also in the middle of Mad Men's last season, but because it's split into two parts and won't air the final eight episodes until 2015, Hendricks could have a shot next year, as well. She's been nominated every year since 2010 and hasn't yet won, and it would be a travesty if she never got the recognition she deserves for playing Joan so well.
In her acceptance speech, Gunn first thanked the Breaking Bad casting director Sharon Bialy. Gunn described how Bialy called her seven years ago and said, "Get your patootie in here and read for this show, it’s the best pilot script I’ve ever seen." Gunn added, "And she was right."
Gunn then thanked showrunner Vince Gilligan as well as the producers, writers, and crew. She added that her BB fellow actors were the "Most remarkable cast I ever could have asked to work with every day." | https://www.bustle.com/articles/36909-anna-gunn-won-the-supporting-actress-emmy-for-breaking-bad-as-she-should-have-video |
Late night: Colbert makes Vince Gilligan continue ‘Breaking Bad’
Basking in the post-finale glory, “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan was the guest on “The Colbert Report” on Monday night. But instead of heaping praise on the writer, Stephen Colbert begged, needled and, in the end, forced him to continue the series.
In case you’ve been living in a self-imposed media blackout, the 6-year-old series came to a rousing conclusion on AMC on Sunday night to huge ratings and very satisfied fans. It’s the rare case of a series going out on top. But according to Colbert, Gilligan should have kept going.
“Why stop?” he asked. “Are you allergic to cash?”
As Colbert points out, 10.3 million people watched the finale. “It blew the doors off all your previous ratings,” he said.
PHOTOS: ‘Breaking Bad’ scenes | Every season, every episode
Gilligan pointed out that the show’s first episode, which aired back in January of 2008, had under a million viewers, crushed by “a big football game” that aired at the same time.
Nice guy that he is, Gilligan did reveal that he hasn’t necessarily washed himself clean of the criminal world of Walter White. Colbert wondered if it would be hard to get Walter out of his head.
“You know what? Yeah, I think it will be hard,” Gilligan said. “He’s a tough guy to have stuck in your head 24 hours a day, six years straight.”
But lest you think that Gilligan runs the risk of becoming an amoral monster (a la Mr. White), he did tell Colbert: “There were times it became extremely difficult to root for him, because he became kind of a bastard a lot of times.”
PHOTOS: Before they were actors on ‘Breaking Bad’
He also revealed what he thought the most evil thing Walt did in the show’s entire run. He said it came in the final season, in the episode “Ozymandias.”
“It’s when Walt said to Jesse, with apparent glee, ‘I watched Jane die’,” Gilligan said. Jane, played by Krysten Ritter, was Jesse’s drug-abusing girlfriend who choked to death on her own vomit during Season 2, and Walt watched and did nothing to help her.
Gilligan went on to compare the end of “Breaking Bad” to both “Lord of the Rings” and “The Searchers.”
PHOTOS: ‘Breaking Bad’s’ darkest moments [spoilers]
“I think he’s coming back for his Precious, and his Precious is the blue meth and the lab, the lab he constructed,” Gilligan said.
He also explained the ending of “The Searchers,” in which John Wayne saves Natalie Wood’s character from the Comanches, and takes her home.
“We stole from the best,” Gilligan said.
But it wasn’t the interview that Colbert had in mind when he brought Gilligan out from Los Angeles. In the show’s signoff, Colbert reveals that he has chained the writer in the basement of the show with one task -- to write more “Breaking Bad.”
Will Gilligan be able to think his way away from his most strident fans? We’ll see.
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You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. | https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-late-night-colbert-makes-vince-gilligan-continue-breaking-bad-20131001-story.html |
There are a lot of questions hanging over Better Call Saul—if we’re being honest, it’s the kind of show where “questions hanging” is a big part of the appeal—but one of the most lingering has been that of when it’ll finally, fully collide with its parent series, Breaking Bad, and its meth-cooking “heroes,” Jesse Pinkman and Walter White. (The show has teased its Breaking Bad connections prominently over its first three seasons—most recently with the introduction of Giancarlo Esposito’s Gus Fring—but has held off on taking any trips to a particular Albuquerque car wash.)
But the time may have finally come for Jimmy McGill to meet his destiny, with the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, telling reporters he “desperately wants” BB stars Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston to appear on his newest series. Gilligan made the comments during a cast-crew reunion for Breaking Bad set up for an Entertainment Weekly cover shoot this week, telling interviewers “I desperately want to see both of them on Better Call Saul,” and mentioning “the buzz” that went through the show’s set when Cranston made a recent visit.
For their part, Cranston and Paul both sound game, expressing their total faith that, whatever Gilligan cooked up for them, it’d be for more than just blatant fanservice. “If Vince decided to put Jesse in Better Call Saul, it’s going to be for a reason,” Paul said, “And that reason’s going to be very satisfying for me. I trust in Vince.”
Not for nothing, but Saul star Bob Odenkirk recently weighed in on a possible reunion, too, albeit in a very different format: Odenkirk was recently on The Late Late Show, and participated in a regular bit where stars respond to Reddit fan theories about them and their shows. Odenkirk rolled his eyes at a couple of the theories—he could probably happily go his whole career without anybody mentioning Let’s Go To Prison to him ever again—but seemed to light up at the idea that Jesse Pinkman might someday show up to harass Gene the Cinnabon Manager in Omaha.
“I think we’ve waited long enough,” Gilligan said of the potential reunion. “We damn well better have a good reason for them to show up. I just hope we figure it out because I’ve got to hear, ‘Yeah, bitch!’ one more time.”
Better Call Saul returns for its fourth season on AMC on August 6. | https://www.avclub.com/vince-gilligan-desperately-wants-walt-and-jesse-to-sh-1827262569 |
Sarah Sisson, a third-year athletic training major at West Virginia Wesleyan College, is passionate about animals. As an issue team leader for the WE LEAD Animal Welfare and Sustainability team at the college, Sarah has organized several events to help animals locally and beyond. She has coordinated multiple adoption events on campus, leading to over 30 animal adoptions over the past three years. She has organized a 5K-9 race and collections to benefit local shelters and rescues. She has also advocated for animals as part of Humane Lobby Day at the state legislature. Recently, she has been exploring the intersections of animal welfare issues with environmental issues, screening films on campus, and leading thoughtful discussions around issues of consumer behavior and climate change. She also worked with a committee through the City of Buckhannon to secure a grant to build a dog park. Sarah is a passionate educator on issues of animal welfare, sustainability, and conservation, being a true champion for the voiceless in our society.
As a child, I grew up around animals and adored each one I met, so my mom decided that we could start volunteering at the local humane society together. I was aware that some animals were mistreated, but it wasn't until I came to college and expanded my knowledge to animals that were outside of our basic household pets that I came to realize that animal welfare was my passion. The more my animal welfare team on campus collaborated with the sustainability team, the more I began to notice the immense amount of connections between the two topics. These connections expanded my passion from animal welfare to sustainability and environmental efforts as these two topics tend to rely on the other to be successful. Through these teams, I have been able to lobby for better legislation for animal rights at my state capitol; collaborate with local rescues and shelters with adoption events and many local businesses and groups to host a 5K fundraising walk; and educate students, faculty, staff, and community about local, national, and international animal welfare and sustainability efforts. I have found my passion truly lies in being an advocate and voice for those who don't have one. | https://compact.org/newman-civic-fellow/sarah-sisson/ |
Claire leads strategic planning and delivery of all HSI/UK’s national campaigns such as the #FurFreeBritain campaign for a UK fur sales ban and Forward Food plant-based culinary training. She has day-to-day responsibility for the charity’s governance and liaises with colleagues overseas to establish where HSI/UK can add value and effectiveness to HSI’s global priority campaigns, including ending the dog meat trade, trophy hunting, wildlife trade and factory farming. Claire also has overall responsibility for charity’s fundraising (including major gifts, trusts and foundations) and supporter and donor care. Externally, she is the chair of the Animal Welfare Strategy Group in a UK NGO umbrella body (Wildlife and Countryside Link) and she is a lead author and strategist on a joint campaign to government to secure the best possible deal for animals as the UK leaves the European Union.
Claire holds an MSc in Marine Environmental Protection from the University of Wales and in her previous role as Head of Wildlife Campaigns at World Animal Protection she was responsible for the concept, strategic planning, and launch of the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, a collaboration that now has membership of 18 governments and more than 100 businesses and NGOs working together on solutions to the problem of lost, abandoned and discarded fishing gear. Claire lives on the south coast of England with her family including rescue dog Henry, who was saved by HSI from a dog meat farm in South Korea. | https://www.hsi.org/about-us/our-leadership/claire-bass/ |
Massey Professor appointed as Chair of Ethics Committee for the Society of Marine Mammalogy
Professor Karen Stockin, a Rutherford Discovery Fellow who leads Massey's Cetacean Ecology Research Group, has been appointed to the Board of Governors as Chair of the Ethics Committee for the Society for Marine Mammalogy.
The mission of the international Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) is to promote the global advancement of marine mammal science and contribute to its relevance and impact in education, conservation and management. With over 2000 members from 56 countries globally, the society is a focal part of global developments in marine mammal science.
Professor Stockin says she feels exceptionally honoured to take up this leadership role for the society. "I am really looking forward to working with the Society to tackle the many complex ethics and welfare issues within our field."
Professor Stockin is tasked with leading the international Ethics Committee, which overseas matters including the treatment of marine mammals in field research, application of welfare science in marine mammal conservation, and, extending on from the 2013 working group, the humane killing of marine mammals.
Professor Stockin's Rutherford Discovery Fellowship focuses on how articifial intelligence and animal welfare science can increase the effectiveness of human intervention efforts during mass stranding events. She was the inaugural recipient of the Bob Kerridge Animal Welfare Fellowship, and has also served as a specialist expert on the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) Expert Advisory Panel since 2017, and was the IWC's inaugural coordinator of the IWC Strandings Initiative between 2018 and 2020. | https://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=4DA57C52-E6A1-4B80-B27B-4F0C0B1450AA |
Shannon is a graduate of the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a minor in Spanish. Prior to joining Porter Keadle Moore in December of 2008, Shannon spent over two years building rapport and maintaining relations with University of Georgia alumni through working as a Fundraising Representative for the University’s Annual Fund. She now has almost ten years of experience in accounting marketing and since joining the firm has focused her efforts on branding, digital marketing, search engine optimization, public relations, event planning and social media as well as assisting with the implementation of firm-wide strategic marketing, communications, young professionals and business development initiatives.
Shannon is an active member of the Association for Accounting Marketing, serving as a member and former co-chair of the member growth committee. She is an advocate for animal welfare and also served on the Board of the Golden Retriever Rescue of Atlanta as the Director of Fundraising in 2016.
Education
- Bachelor of Science in Psychology, University of Georgia
- Minor in Spanish, University of Georgia
Organization Involvement
- Association for Accounting Marketing
- National Brewer’s Association
Hobbies & Interests
Shannon enjoys spending time outdoors, playing tennis and hiking. She also loves to travel and spend time with her friends, family and their dogs. | https://www.pkm.com/about/team/shannon-hamilton/ |
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Characterising the abandonment and relinquishment of exotic pets in Ireland
Fund
AWF Research Fund
Grant
£4,360
Research Period
2021
Area of study
Student Research
Description
Investigator(s):
Matt Goins
Supervisor(s): Alison Hanlon
Surrender of pets and breakdown of the human-animal bond is an area of research that has previously focused on common domestic pets. With regard to exotic pets, there has been no research previously conducted in the Republic of Ireland on the topic, however the number of calls to the RSPCA cruelty line has markedly increased in recently years.
This case study sought to characterise the abandonment and surrender of exotic pets in Ireland by:
Examining the population of animal welfare charities operating in Ireland who accept exotic pets
Defining the population that is surrendered on a yearly basis (as well as the breakdown by type of pet and their health and welfare)
Exploring issues that animal welfare charities experience with regard to exotic pets
And exploring potential policy proposals that would affect exotic pet ownership.
Of a sample population of 106 animal welfare charities operating in Ireland, 11 were found to accept exotic pets. Of those 11 animal welfare charities, six consented to participate in the study and these six were found to have accepted a total of 366 exotic pets between 2018 and 2020. The most common types of exotic pets to be surrendered were exotic mammals (159) followed by birds (129) and reptiles (26) and of the exotic mammals rabbits (61) were the most common to be surrendered followed by guinea pigs (53).
The most common health or welfare issue reported by the charities was related to poor owner education and inadequate husbandry. The most common outcome for exotic pets entering these charities was to be moved to a sanctuary or specialty centre. The main concerns expressed by the charities regarding exotic pet ownership were:
Lack of owner education before purchasing the pets
People were inappropriately dealing in exotic pets, such as mislabeling animals in order to sell endangered species
A lack of traceability of exotic pets entering the country.
This study also found widespread support for policy proposals such as positive lists for exotic pets. Positive lists are legislation identifying species that are allowed to be owned rather than more traditional legislation that bans the ownership of certain species or breeds. With regard to exotic pets, positive lists are generally accepted to be easier to enforce and more difficult to circumvent to trade in vulnerable or endangered species.
The findings of this study are important to document as they offer insight into the current situation affecting exotic pets in Ireland. They can be used to inform on future government and legislative efforts regarding exotic pet health and welfare and may be particularly useful to the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine as their animal welfare strategy for 2021-2025 was released earlier this year and included exotic pets for the first time.
A paper is due to be published soon. | https://www.animalwelfarefoundation.org.uk/grant/characterising-the-abandonment-and-relinquishment-of-exotic-pets-in-ireland/ |
Every year we grant financial support and donate Dyson machines for fundraising purposes, to charitable causes that fall within one of our three charitable objectives:
- Engineering education
- Medical or scientific research
- Projects and organisations in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, where Dyson's head office is based
Unfortunately we are unable to support charities and organisations that do not fit this remit. This includes:
- Animal welfare
- Loans or funding for individuals or companies
- Sports team sponsorship
If you think your fundraising qualifies for charitable support, please complete the below form and include as much information as possible. We'll get back to you within two weeks. | https://www.jamesdysonfoundation.co.uk/contact-us/request-a-donation.html |
Chimney Farm International Dog Rescue started life as UK Romanian Dog Rescue and was founded in 2014 by Jennifer Gilbert and Lisa Webster, two dedicated animal lovers, who brought 28 imprisoned dogs to the UK from a horrific existence in Romania, where laws allow inhumane treatment of captured stray dogs.
Lisa and Jen have been rescuing these dogs and re-homing Romanian, Greek and Bosnian dogs in the UK for over 2 years now. By joining forces with Chimney Farm, and increasing their fundraising efforts they will be able to expand and develop an international rescue program focusing on helping dogs from other countries where animal welfare laws don’t exist as well as developing much needed overseas neutering and education programs to reduce the number strays born into an existence of hardship suffering and neglect.
At Chimney Farm the dogs are housed in beautifully converted stables with a secure one acre grass paddock to explore and remember what it feels like to be a dog again! They are loved and walked daily by a team of dedicated volunteers. As part of the rescuing mission the dogs are rehomed to suitable adopters, who undergo a strict rehoming process.
Chimney Farm is based in Guildford Surrey. It is also home to a small animal Sanctuary for other unwanted animals as well as the Chimney Farm Project which offers Children that are unable to access mainstream education a chance to learn in a enriched environment where animal welfare and care is central to their daily school day.
For further information about this charity, please visit their websites: | https://www.briarsgroup.com/about/briars-foundation/chimney-farm-international-dog-rescue/ |
Women in Development is a membership organization dedicated to helping women advance their careers or volunteer efforts in the field of fundraising through education, networking, and professional development. Quality programming is the backbone of our organization. Through a series of monthly luncheon programs, members learn from industry experts presenting on a variety of topics as well as from other local female fundraising professionals by the sharing of ideas and experience.
This dynamic group of women represents a variety of nonprofit sectors including human services, music and the arts, environmental advocacy, child welfare, animal rights, among others. | https://www.widworcester.org/ |
This free webinar, led by Dick Green of the ASPCA’s disaster response team, covers the importance of categorizing and describing disaster resources—a process known as resource typing—and how to efficiently request those resources for animals in need.
Takeaways
The effectiveness of response is dependent upon the availability of resources—and often in larger disasters local resources are not able to keep up with demand, which means outside assistance must be requested.
Attendees will learn:
- What resource typing is and how it enhances the effectiveness of response efforts
- How animal resources are typed according to guidelines established by FEMA in 2018
- How to request animal resources based on the new FEMA guidelines
Suited For
- County and state emergency managers
- Authorities having jurisdiction (typically animal control at county level and Department of Agriculture at state level)
- First responders who are interested in deploying outside their service area
- County Animal Response Team (CART) leadership
- State Animal Response Team leadership
Downloads
Dick Green, EdD
ASPCA Senior Director, Disaster Response
Dr. Dick Green is responsible for leading the efforts of the ASPCA Disaster Response department, which covers natural disasters. He oversees the ASPCA's internal disaster readiness program and develops partnerships with national and local agencies to enhance the organization’s disaster response capabilities. He established and chaired the National Animal Rescue and Sheltering Coalition in early 2006, following Hurricane Katrina. NARSC is comprised of 13 animal welfare groups, including the ASPCA, and is the first coalition in the nation that is dedicated to working with all levels of government and non-government agencies on major human-animal emergency issues.
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Veterinary Standard Precautions for Zoonotic Disease Prevention
Review standard protocol and precautions for preventing the spread of zoonotic diseases. | https://www.aspcapro.org/webinar/2019-06-20-120000/how-use-animal-resource-typing-improve-disaster-response |
WISCONSIN HUMANE SOCIETY HIRES NEW VICE PRESIDENT OF DEVELOPMENT
Milwaukee, WI – The Wisconsin Humane Society (WHS) has hired a new vice president of development, Bridgette Frommell, who began in her new role on December 14. Frommell came to WHS from the Aurora Health Care Foundation, where she served as a Foundation Development Officer. Frommell replaces Jenny Mueller, who stepped into a new development role supporting the organization’s work in Racine County.
Frommell manages a team of seven development staff and oversees all fundraising initiatives for the Wisconsin Humane Society, which is the largest animal welfare organization in the state and is nationally recognized for its leadership in the animal welfare field. WHS’s annual budget is $8.6 million, $5 million of which is raised through private contributions and estate gifts.
“After an extensive search, Bridgette Frommell was the clear candidate to fill this key position,” said Anne Reed, WHS president & CEO. “We are privileged that so many people love animals and want to help them -- so it takes a unique combination of passion and systematic thinking to ensure our supporters are connected and inspired. They will be in good hands under her leadership.”
Prior to working for Aurora Health Care Foundation, Frommell served as the Director of Institutional Advancement at Pius XI High School. She is a board member at Park’s Edge Preschool in Greendale and member of the Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee and Association of Fundraising Professionals. Her past accomplishments also include: Co-Founder and President of Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN), Milwaukee Chapter; Board Member, National YNPN; Treasurer, National YNPN; Member, Young Professionals of Milwaukee; and Chair, St. Martin of Tours Communication Committee. She obtained her BA in Communication Arts from UW-Madison.
“The Wisconsin Humane Society does incredible work in this community and is a treasure to animals and people alike,” said Frommell. “Life-changing work happens here and I’m so proud to lead the fundraising efforts that make this work possible.”
Frommell lives in Greendale with her husband, three children, and Hayley, the family’s Labrador Retriever.
# # #
The Wisconsin Humane Society (WHS) is the oldest and largest shelter in Wisconsin. It was founded in 1879 and operates shelters in Milwaukee, Ozaukee and Racine Counties, as well as a spay/neuter clinic in West Allis. The organization offers adoption services, educational programming, veterinary resources for animals from low-income households, retail stores, volunteer programs and dog training classes. The Milwaukee shelter also houses the state’s largest Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. WHS is an independent nonprofit and receives no general government funding and is not part of any national umbrella group. | https://www.wihumane.org/news/wisconsin-humane-society-hires-new-vice-president-of-development |
A Swindon RAF veteran refuses to let a disability prevent her from tackling the 80 Miles in 80 Days challenge for good causes.
Lorraine Tilston-Brookes, 56, served in the Women’s Royal Air Force from 1983 to 1988 as a telephonist, but a fall from a lorry during basic training injured her spine and left her with chronic pain.
She will be completing the 80 Miles in 80 Days challenge alongside her service dog, Doris.
The challenge begins on 1 June and runs until 19 August, with money raised split between the RAF Air Cadets and the RAF Benevolent Fund.
Lorraine said: “The Fund supported me when I needed a new profiling bed 10 years ago, which made an enormous difference.
"I’m also a huge supporter of the air cadets, and my dog Doris is the unofficial mascot of the local air cadets, 878 (Highworth) Squadron, so this challenge seemed like a great way to support two causes that are close to my heart.
“Although walking 80 Miles in 80 Days will be physically challenging for me, I know that Doris will help keep me motivated. She always helps lift my mood and gets me up and out of the house even when I’m in a lot of pain.”
The benevolent fund and the air cadets have partnered with one another to raise £80,000 in honour of the cadets' 80th anniversary.
Set up in 1941, the Combined Cadet Force and Air Training Corps are collectively known as the RAF Air Cadets. The groups provide youngsters aged 13 and above with opportunities for adventure, training and skills including learning to fly a glider.
The air cadets and the RAF Benevolent Fund have a long history of working together. As a charity which supports the RAF Family, the fund has always been able to rely on support from the cadets in this mission with everything from fundraising efforts to supporting veterans and serving personnel at fund events.
To mark the organisation’s 80th anniversary, the RAF Benevolent Fund is offering an enhanced package of welfare support for the RAF Air Cadets, including members of the Combined Cadet Force.
Support includes help with emotional wellbeing, counselling and bereavement support, as well as financial support if a member is killed, whether on or off duty. This also extends to staff cadets and uniformed volunteers. | https://swindonlink.com/charity/charity-raf-miles-challenge/ |
- To put in place curricula that cover broad and dynamic engineering principles, working knowledge of entrepreneurial, marketing and management principles.
- To empower our students with the necessary skills to create value and bring the solutions needed to tackle challenges in the petroleum and allied industries.
- To make our graduates foremost petroleum engineers in the country and internationally through a well-designed competency-based training programme of teaching and research.
- To facilitate the acquisition of practical work experience in the industries.
Program Educational Objectives
The Petroleum Engineering programme aims to enable suitably qualified graduates from a range of engineering backgrounds to:
OB1 Develop knowledge, skills (including transferable skills, such as leadership, motivation, time management, prioritisation, delegation, listening, communication, analytics) and understanding, as well as awareness and “know how”, in the fields of engineering and its related disciplines so that as graduates they will be equipped to enter into self-employment and employment as professional engineers progressing on to Registered Engineer (or equivalent status) or a wide range of other professional careers.
OB2 Prepare them to engage in life-long and critical enquiry with skills in research and knowledge acquisition and an appreciation of the value of education to the wider community.
OB3 Provide them with internationally recognised qualifications which meet and exceed the requirements of the COREN Outcome-Based Education Benchmark for Engineering Programmes in Nigeria and international Benchmark Statements for Engineering for ABET, Engineering Council, UK, etc.
Students Outcome
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Apply knowledge of mathematics, science, engineering fundamentals and an engineering specialization to the solution of developmental and complex engineering problems.
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O2. Problem Analysis
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Identify, formulate, research literature and analyse developmental and complex engineering problems reaching substantiated conclusions using first principles of mathematics, natural sciences and engineering sciences.
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O3. Design /development of solutions
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Proffer solutions for developmental or complex engineering problems and design systems, components or processes that meet specified needs with appropriate consideration for public health and safety, cultural, societal and environmental considerations
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O4. Investigation
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Conduct investigation into developmental or complex problems using research based knowledge and research methods including design of experiments, analysis and interpretation of data, and synthesis of information to provide valid conclusions.
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O5. Modern Tool
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Create, select and apply appropriate techniques, resources and modern engineering and ICT tools, including prediction, modelling and optimization to developmental and complex engineering activities, with an understanding of the limitations.
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O6. The Engineer and Society
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Apply reasoning informed by contextual knowledge including Humanities and Social Sciences to assess societal, health, safety, legal and cultural issues and the consequent responsibilities relevant to professional engineering practice
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O7. Environment & Sustainability
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Understand the impact of professional engineering solutions in societal and environmental contexts and demonstrate knowledge of and need for sustainable development.
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O8. Ethics
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Apply ethical principles and commit to professional ethics and responsibilities and norms of engineering practice, including adherence to the COREN Engineers Code of Conducts.
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O9. Individual and Team work
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Function effectively as an individual, and as a member or leader in diverse teams and in multi-disciplinary settings.
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O10. Communication
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Communicate effectively on developmental or complex engineering activities with the engineering community and with society at large, such as being able to comprehend and write effective reports and design documentation, make effective presentations, and give and receive clear instructions.
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O11. Project Management and Finance
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Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of engineering, management and financial principles and apply these to one's own work, as a member and leader in a team, to manage projects and in multi-disciplinary environments.
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O12. Lifelong learning
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Recognize the need for, and have the preparations and ability to engage in independent and lifelong learning in the broadest context of technological and social changes. | https://pet.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/index.php/about |
Module summaryThis module will allow you to develop your skills in communicating current research to selected audiences from outside the University. Within academia we are trained in writing and presenting to colleagues and peers, but little about communicating research at an appropriate level, and in an interesting way, to an audience group from the general public. This module will enable you to develop key skills that both graduate employers and the research community are looking for. You will be able to design, and implement effectively, appropriate activities to communicate the research to a general audience. The skills covered will include an overview of aims and purposes of engaging a wider audience, event management, marketing, communication, role of the media, funding, what makes quality public engagement, skills for effective partnership, working with museums, understanding your audience, using social media to engage, ethics and evaluation for impact. These are all key skills which will make you competitive, and help you succeed in the global research and employment market. This is a discovery module, open to all students, emphasising the link between research and student education. Working in partnership across the University:Students will be working with networks and services across the institution (e.g. Sustainability, Student Volunteering, Digital Team, Alumni, Educational Engagement and Communications, Employability Officers, Engagement Champions, Outreach Fellows and the University’s Public Engagement Network members) and in consultation with other Institutions, to learn from best practice.
ObjectivesBy the end of this module, students should have a basic understanding of the research ongoing in their part of the University focussing through the assessment on one aspect, and be able to communicate this to a variety of audiences outside of the University community.
Learning outcomes
On completion of the module students will be able to:
1. Highlight the importance of engaging the wider public audience with research at the University, plan events, market and communicate these effectively;
2. Be aware of health and safety and ethical issues;
3. Understand different audiences and be able to create bespoke activities dependant on audience needs;
4. Enhance their communication skills, both written and verbal, and learn about working within the museum sector;
5. Be aware of the potential to work with the public in co-designing research and collaborating with them;
6. Learn about evaluation and self-reflection of practice and how public engagement can lead to demonstrating impact of research;
7. Be made aware of potential employment opportunities that have these skills embedded within.
This is a theoretical module but skills will be assessed through the production of the written assessment.
Skills outcomes
This module is completely multi-disciplinary and should appeal to students irrespective of the programme of study. The project can take the multi-disciplinary skills learnt from the module and put them in context.
Syllabus
Syllabus
- Topical research issues
- Importance of Public engagement with the University
- Planning and event management
- Health, safety and ethics
- Know your audience
- Media and marketing
- Communication skills
- Working with external organisations
- Collaboration, co-design, participatory research
- Evaluation
- Demonstrating impact
- Employability
Teaching methods
|Delivery type||Number||Length hours||Student hours|
|Workshop||7||2.00||14.00|
|e-Lecture||2||1.00||2.00|
|Oral Class||1||4.00||4.00|
|Student-led discussion||1||1.00||1.00|
|Independent online learning hours||9.00|
|Private study hours||70.00|
|Total Contact hours||21.00|
|Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)||100.00|
Private studyPrivate study will involve work prior to and following workshops. It will involve study for the piece of summative assessment submitted.
Submission to a reflective blog as formative assessment.
Opportunities for Formative FeedbackEngagement with the module will be assessed by submission to the reflective online blog, attendance at the sessions, engagement in the sessions and each student will get formative feedback in week 7/8 when they present their ideas to staff and each other.
Methods of assessment
Coursework
|Assessment type||Notes||% of formal assessment|
|In-course Assessment||Students choose from one of the following 1) a public engagement grant proposal. 2) A pre-recorded escalator pitch and written answers to key interview questions 3) Creation of an e-portfolio based on designing an output, getting feedback, reflecting and developing 4) an evidence-based report or other similar appropriate assessment.||100.00|
|Oral Presentation||Formative assessment: Present project plan to group||0.00|
|Reflective log||Engagement with the module will be assessed by submission to the reflective online blog 4 times during the semester, attendance at the workshops, attendance and engagement in the one to one tutorial.||0.00|
|Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)||100.00|
Oral presentation and reflective log will be required to pass the module. | https://webprod3.leeds.ac.uk/catalogue/dynmodules.asp?Y=202223&F=P&M=FOBS-2240 |
About Civic Leadership
Freedom and Citizenship is a full year program, and students should join if they're passionate about making a difference in their communities.
Questions and Answers about Civic Leadership
- What are the goals of the project?
- The civic curriculum is designed to provide our students with the personal, civic, and academic skills necessary to become engaged and active citizens. Your group may not solve the social problems you identify this year, but you will develop the experience necessary to lead the way on civic issues in the future. The goal is not to create great presentations for Civic Night but to create great citizens.
- What is the Civic Leadership project?
- After the summer, students return to Columbia's campus twice a month to work in small groups on civic leadership projects. Students are led by undergraduate teaching assistants in selecting an issue they care about, researching it, and calling others to action on that issue.
- Why civic leadership?
- We believe citizenship is a verb: it is a practice of engagement available to anyone in a community regardless of legal status, age, or ability. The action of citizenship goes beyond recognizing injustices or educating and “raising awareness” about societal problems: it means doing things that can lead to direct change. After spending a summer learning about the origins of freedom and citizenship, we are now embarking on a yearlong curriculum designed to help us become leaders in active citizenship.
- How do you accomplish this?
- Each group will create a “call to action” that informs young people about a civic problem and offers them a method of actively pursuing change. The foundations for this project rest on three pillars: (1) Students will become informed by learning about the issue, its origins, and its effects in society; (2) Students will become engaged in the broader conversation around the issue by connecting with other activists and contacting politicians; (3) Students will become active by identifying opportunities for producing civic change. While TAs will guide their students through the three pillars of civic engagement, it is the students’ responsibility to carry out the project.
- What is the time commitment?
- Students should expect to come to Columbia for two-hour-long civic meetings every other week from September through April. Meetings are typically held in the evenings, around 5-7pm.
- What skills will we gain? | https://freedomandcitizenship.columbia.edu/about-civic-leadership |
Through their experiences at Diablo Valley College, a student will develop proficiency in the five areas identified in the following list as part of a dynamic educational environment.
A student with effective communication skills will be a good listener and speaker. They will be able to communicate orally, through writing, and visually using an appropriate medium. A student with collaboration skills will be able to work with teams comprised of a diverse set of people. They will develop leadership skills and the ability to work with groups on the completion of a wide variety of projects.
This includes effective written and visual message construction, media choices, leadership skills, and the ability to work with others on projects.
A student with an empathy mindset will be able to build relationships through understanding and valuing others with diverse backgrounds and cultures. They will be connected and active in their community and will act in accordance with ethical norms.
This includes social and diversity awareness, civic engagement, and ethics.
A student with a growth mindset is willing to take risks, learn from mistakes, and has a drive to complete tasks. They set goals and priorities for actions and are flexible and able to respond to changes. A person with a growth mindset believes that abilities and intelligence can be developed through practice, training, and effort.
This includes adaptability, resilience, self-awareness, and entrepreneurial mindset.
A student who is information and technology fluent will utilize appropriate technology to locate and critically evaluate information from a variety of sources, to formulate responses to issues, reach informed decisions, and communicate effectively.
This includes being flexible and strategic in the use of technology, as well as the accurate and ethical use of written and visual materials.
A student with a solution mindset will think critically and evaluate information sources for accuracy and usefulness. They will think critically about data and information. They will be able to design and implement appropriate solutions for situations they face.
This includes understanding methods of inquiry and analysis of available choices. | https://www.dvc.edu/about/governance/institutional-learning-outcomes.html |
Being civically engaged means building your compassion, critical thinking, and collaboration skills as you work to better your community. Ninety-two percent of business leaders believe volunteering expands an employee’s professional skill set.
Civic engagement minor at Cornell
By pursuing the civic engagement minor at Cornell, you can help implement change in corporate America, in the local economy, in rural and remote regions, in busy urban spaces, or on a much wider global scale—wherever your passion for change leads you. Being civically engaged requires a deeper understanding of the world around you and a drive to improve it.
Coursework for this minor is interdisciplinary and is designed to help you become a more thoughtful and informed citizen of the world. You’ll study ethics, political systems, social issues, and public scholarship and policy. Plus, you will make a real impact on the community through volunteering and immersive projects.
This is what it means to be a changemaker at Cornell.
Experiential learning through civic engagement
Take action with service learning opportunities
Through coursework and community involvement, you will achieve an increased awareness of society's challenging problems. Want to work hands-on with your community? You’ll have the opportunity to gain direct experience working with a local organization, progressing from learning about social problems to actively working toward a resolution. In fact, in a typical year at Cornell, more than 650 students volunteer 15,000 hours for community service, most of it locally, for a value of $428,100. There are many ways to get involved.
Our distinctive block plan structure will enable you to experience aspects of civic engagement and service learning that are outside the reach of undergraduates at colleges on a traditional semester plan. You can even use civic engagement coursework to complete an Ingenuity in Action project. Experiential learning means you meet people working in the real world on issues you care about. In other words, you aren’t anchored to just reading about policy and its impact—you will see it firsthand.
Course and degree requirements
Your coursework for the civic engagement minor will develop hands-on skills and foster critical thinking about the world around you. You will need to take a minimum of six course credits, including:
- Three core courses
- One course in critical-thinking/research methods
- One course concerned with efforts to address societal issues
- One course in applied civic engagement
- A minimum of 25 noncredit hours of civic engagement involvement over the course of at least two semesters, including volunteering, activism, and other civic engagement opportunities
Alumni support Tanzania Water Projects
Three Cornell College alumni talk about how they're involved with bringing clean water resources to Tanzania, and how people there are using their water resources to create a future for their families and their communities.
Alumni Support Tanzania Water Projects from Cornell College on Vimeo.
Experiences that make an impact
Your experiences volunteering and working with the community will serve you throughout your lifetime. These opportunities are constructed to hone your critical-thinking, collaboration, and communication skills—skills highly valued by employers across industries. They are also a great way to gain hands-on experience. In recent years, four students served on the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Emergency Medical Services team, and two students volunteered with the Mount Vernon Fire Department. Additionally, nearly 20 students provide weekly tutoring at Mount Vernon Middle School.
That’s why 82% of business leaders are more likely to choose a candidate with volunteer experience, because they know they are gaining highly valued employees who can think through challenges and know how to implement actions that work toward a solution.
Meet our civic engagement office staff members! We’re dedicated to improving the community and helping others and value talking to students about civic engagement opportunities.
Civic engagement degree options
You will be eligible to earn a minor in civic engagement. This minor is complementary to any major program at Cornell, including our environmental science and sustainability major, or our race, ethnicity, and social justice major. | https://www.cornellcollege.edu/civic-engagement/civic-engagement-minor.shtml |
This course seeks to equip students with persuasive communication skills, both oral and written, through analyzing business cases and presenting solutions to problems identified. It provides students with a solid framework and hands-on practice to communicate persuasively and professionally in business settings. In presenting the case problem, analysis and recommendations, students learn to identify issues, develop and organize key ideas, and eventually to persuade the audience of the validity of the arguments and proposed actions. The course sharpens students' ability to explain and support ideas logically, coherently and cohesively using various techniques, to communicate clearly, concisely and accurately, and in appropriate tone and style. Through a range of learning activities involving reading, discussion, writing and making oral presentations, students also develop critical reading, critical thinking and problem solving skills as well as teamwork and leadership skills. For students who have this course as a program requirement. | https://cle.hkust.edu.hk/courses/labu2040 |
UAB 21: Our Vision for the 21st Century • Goal I: Transforming Undergraduate LearningWe will provide a student-centered, collaborative learning experience to prepare diverse students for rewarding careers and lives that benefit society and our regional and global economy.
UAB: QEP Degrees of Excellence • Ethics and Civic Responsibility (ECR) • The role of a university is to prepare students to function effectively and engage responsibly in both the academic community and post-graduation life. Excellence and integrity should be academic, personal, and professional goals for everyone. Effective and responsible living depends upon the ability of individuals to strive for excellence, to make informed and ethical decisions, to accept responsibility for one’s choices, and to practice good citizenship as part of multiple larger social units.
RECOGNITION & PUBLICITY UAB has received the highest federal recognition for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement • 2008 Carnegie Community Engagement Classification for the Advancement of Teaching • 2010 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for exemplary service to America’s communities • Presentations at Regional and National Conferences on SL and Civic Engagement
Understanding Academic Service Learning Adapted from Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Service-Learning Course Design Workbook, Companion Volume Summer 2001, Jeffrey Howard, Editor MJCSL
Processes of Academic Service Learning • Engagement in service activities with a selected community partner in a mutually beneficial relationship based on a spirit of collaboration. • Reflection upon larger issues that affect communities through readings and submission of weekly structured reflections. • Integration of community engagement and academic learning through in class discussions and experiential activities, critical thinking papers, and a final presentation.
Benefits of Service Learning for Students For Students • Enriches student learning of course material and "brings books to life and life to books". • Engages students in active learning that demonstrates the relevance and importance of academic work for their life experience and career choices. • Increases awareness of current societal issues as they relate to academic areas of interest. • Broadens perspectives of diversity issues and enhances critical thinking skills. • Improves interpersonal skills that are increasingly viewed as important skills in achieving success in professional and personal spheres. • Develops civic responsibility through active community involvement.
Benefits of Service Learning for Community • Allows the energy and enthusiasm of college students to contribute to meeting needs educational, human, safety, and environmental needs of local communities. • Fosters an ethic of service and civic participation in students who will be tomorrow's volunteers and civic leaders. • Creates potential for additional partnerships and collaboration with the campus
Benefits of Service Learning for Faculty • Enriches and enlivens teaching and learning. • Creates new areas for research and scholarship, and increases opportunities for professional recognition and reward. • Regarded as involving significant teaching and learning about civic responsibilityin review of QEP initiatives
Service-Learning Resources • www.uab.edu/service-learning • Tips and tools for Faculty & Staff, Students, Community Partners • Sample service-learning syllabi for every discipline • Highlighted UAB Community Partners for service learning • Useful forms for structure Service-Learning Experience • Reflection and Assessment tools • Upcoming Service-Learning Events
Service-Learning Course Designation The Service Learning Course Rubric is designed to help analyze the extent to which a course satisfies each of the required elements. • Enhanced Academic Learning • Purposeful Civic Learning • Relevant and Meaningful Service with the Community • Integration Strategies
Designated Service-Learning Courses • Biology Field and Lab Science Education and Mentoring/SL BY 399 • Business Management: Service Learning/SL MG 490 Capstone in Psychology/SL PY 490Civic Engagement/SL SBS 303 • Community and Service: Using Media for Social Change/SL DCS 350 • Community-Based Practicum in Psychology/SL PY 397Dollars and Sense: An Introduction to Business, Economics, and Personal Finance/SL LCB 101ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM-MAKING/SL DCS 401/HON 316/ARS 406 & 407 • **EXPLORING BIRMINGHAM LCS 101-607 Freshman Seminar • Food Security National and Global Issues/SL SOC 490Foreign Language Internship/Service Learning/SL FLL 333 • Geriatric Services & Social Work/SL SW 205 • Health Sciences Management Internship/SL AHS 481 • Homelessness: Its Causes and Consequences/SL SOC 472 • Impacting Community through Service Learning/SL LCSL 101-618 • **Intermediate Writing and Poetry EH302
Designated Service-Learning Courses (contd.) • Leadership and Community/SL GCLH 301 • New Urbanism and Smarth Growth/SL ANTH 371/DCS 266/UA 366 • Nursing Honors Sequence/SL NUR 368 NUR 484 NUR 486 • Pathfinders: The Path from Sophomore to Professional/SL UNIV 204-56 • Perceptions of Poverty in America CAS 399 Special Topics/SL • Peer Education/SL HE 490Physical Activity Programming for Individuals with Disabilities/SL PE 450Practicum in Social Work/SL SW 490Public Health Nursing Theory Practicum/SL NUR 395 and 396Respiratory Therapy Directed Study in Respiratory Care III/SL RST 432 • SCT Tech Honors: Internships/Community Projects/SL STH 396Service-Learning/Sociological Practice/SL SOC 488Social Work Values Lab/SL SW 222 • Sports Management/SL MG 430 • **Student Success in Nursing NUR 100 • Untold Stories: Finding and Telling Stories You Haven't Been Told In History Class/SL HY291 DCS 291 • Using and Preserving Historic Places as Primary Sources: Studying the Multi-Cultural Heritage of the Southeastern Coast/SL HY 292/392/682
Impacting Community through Service Learning- A Freshman Learning Community Seminar Course Objective – Civic Responsibility • Develop a collaborative relationship with a community partner • Develop an understanding and appreciation of the issues and needs of the populations served by our selected community partners • Work with a community partner to identify a specific need that can be addressed through student involvement • Develop an awareness and understanding of one’s multiple roles and responsibilities as a citizen of a community
Impacting Community through Service Learning- A Freshman Learning Community Seminar Course Objective: Effective Communication and Relationship Skills • Explore foundational concepts of healthy relationships, including empathy, assertiveness, and personal responsibility • Develop increased self-awareness and understanding of personality and emotional intelligence • Develop awareness, knowledge and skills for working with special and diverse populations • Demonstrate use of non-verbal and verbal skills in a helping relationship
Impacting Community through Service Learning- A Freshman Learning Community Seminar Course Objective: First Year Experience • Develop critical and analytical thinking abilities and oral and written expression • Equip students with academic survival skills • Provide students with resources and information to assist with successful transition into the college experience
Engagement Students work with a selected community partner for 2 hours/week for 8 weeks for a total of 16 hours for the semester
Reflection and Integration • Weekly Class Discussions • Weekly Structured Reflections • Final Poster Presentations
Integrating Service-Learning Experience • Community Partner Commitment Form and Service-Learning Agreement • Weekly Structured Reflections • Mid-Term Critical Thinking Paper • Time Log • Mid-Semester Joint Assessment • Final Evaluation by Community Partner • Final Power Point Poster Slide Presentation
UAB National Alumni SocietyService-Learning Poster Competition • Opportunity for students to highlight their service-learning experiences • Panel of three judges select winners • Judges choose PPT slides to be printed as posters and exhibited at the Service-Learning Awards • TIME LINE: • UAB Online Drop Box submissions of PowerPoint poster slides opens Wednesday December 1, 2010 • Deadline for submissions Friday January 21, 2011 • Service-Learning Awards Celebration • Thursday February 17, 2011 at 4:00 p.m. • First Prize - $300 • Second Prize - $200 • Third Prize - $100
Malachi Ray, Fall 2010, Biomedical Engineering, Impacting Community through Service Learning taught by Norma-May Isakow University of Alabama at Birmingham The Exceptional Foundation Community Partner Impacting the Community Academic Learning The Exceptional Foundation was started in 1993 with only five mentally challenged participants. Today that number has grown to over three hundred and fifty members. My main role in volunteering was to help provide social activities for the mentally and physically disabled. This included playing many sports, helping with art classes, and also keeping a healthy environment for all members. I also had the goal to help the members gain more self-confidence and learn basic skills, such as better communication, to help them live a better life. The community is impacted by The Exceptional Foundation by dismissing all negative stereotypes of the mentally challenged. Also, The Exceptional Foundation helps raise awareness about how special and exceptional these people are. The Exceptional Foundation Our mission is to meet the social and recreational needs of the mentally and/or physically challenged individuals in the greater Birmingham Area. 1616 Oxmoor Rd Birmingham, AL 35209 Being Assertive- Sometimes competition got the best of the participants, so it was important to be assertive and talk to the members before relations got too strained. Stereotypes- The mentally disabled are usually associated with many negative stereotypes, but through my volunteering I discovered them all to be untrue. Personality Traits- Knowing the traits of individuals ,such as introvert, extrovert, etc., really helped me to establish rapport. Empathy- Putting myself in the members shoes really helped me in communicating with them. Social Capital- The Exceptional Foundation is hinged on increasing the mentally challenged ‘s Social Capital Personal Growth through Service Learning I have become more aware of all the different types of disabilities, but also how much more fun they usually have in a day than I do. I may smile a few times a day, but many of the members never stop smiling. I have grown by seeing how much joy they have in their lives, and I hope I can learn from them on how to get it. I plan on becoming an optometrist, which means I would have many mentally and physically disabled people as diseases, such as Autism, are growing everyday . Volunteering with many of these people already will have increased my awareness and given me a basis of communication. Acknowledgements The Exceptional Foundation for letting me become closer to so many special individuals and have fun every single time I volunteered Eugene Rogers for giving me the opportunity to volunteer and always being there when I needed something Norma-May Isakow for always being supportive and wanting every student to grow through Service-Learning Challenges and Rewards Many of the mentally challenged communicate in various ways, including many I did not understand. However, through time and patience I learned how to communicate with everyone, even if it meant a crash course in sign language. It was a challenge for me to go into an environment never knowing what really to expect. However, there was a reward in this by learning how to really be an individual. It gives me so much joy to see so many people just being themselves, and not caring what society says. They are who they are, plain and simple.
Assignment of Grades • Service-Learning Assignment Total 390 Points • Community Partner Commitment Form 10 points • Service-Learning Agreement 20 points • 8 Weekly Structured Reflections 80 points (10 per reflection) • Mid-Term Critical Thinking Paper 75 points • Mid-Term Time Log check 5 points • Service Learning Attendance as reported in Final Time Log 80 points (10 per service-learning week) • Final Evaluation by Community Partner 20 points • Final Power Point Poster Slide Presentation 100 points • Attendance and Class Participation (this includes evidence of readings, participation in discussions, etc.). If you miss a class, you must see the instructor about making up any missed activities or in-class assignments. Failure to do so will result in deductions from Participation Grade 50 Points • Dragon Quest Activity 50 points • Academic Advising Assignment Part I 20 points (5 of these points are for scheduling your appointment by 8/24) • Academic Advising Assignment Part II 30 points • Healthy Lifestyles Seminar (earn points by attending class on 9/16) 10 points • Time Management (earn points by attending class in library 9/23) 10 points • Career Services (earn points by attending class 10/5) 10 points • Library Resource Instruction (earn points by attending in library 9/23) 10 points • Academic Integrity ((earn points by completing Online Module) 10 points • Financial Management (earn points by completing Online Module) 10 points • TOTAL: 600 POINTS
CAS 399: Special TopicsPerceptions of Poverty in America • Course Objectives: • Develop an understanding of a spectrum of socio-economic issues relating to poverty in the United States; • Develop critical and analytical thinking skills regarding federal and state policies toward working families; and • Explore strategies to address poverty in the United States.
CAS 399: Community Partners • Impact Alabama Save First Initiative to provide essential tax preparation services to members of our local community • Alabama Possible Blueprints College Access Program to create college-positive culture in Woodlawn High School • Another pre-approved initiative of the student’s own choice
Reflection and Integration • Weekly Class Discussions • Weekly Structured Reflections • Final Critical Thinking Paper and Presentation
Assignment of Grades • Attendance and participation in discussion showing evidence that you’ve done the assigned reading 20% • Training, Testing (where applicable) and Service with Community Partner Service Sites 30% • Weekly Structured Reflections on Blackboard 33% • Final Critical Thinking Paper and Presentation 17% (12% + 5%)
Conclusion: Linking Passion and Skills • “Students come to college to learn, but they also should find a sense of purpose in life — a calling. [Service-Learning] is one way to inspire students and instill in them the skills they need to effectively pursue their passion and effect real change in the world. . . . In short, [Service-Learning] moves people from having ideas to having the skills to do something about it.” David Siemers, | https://www.slideserve.com/amber/office-for-service-learning-presentation-for-university-of-montevallo-thursday-may-26-2011 |
The mission of the Student Services Department is to effectively address barriers to learning and teaching and implement the appropriate programs that will enable students to learn and teachers to teach; create a supportive, positive environment that maximizes learning and well-being; and help to strengthen families and communities.
Homeless Youth
We have an obligation to ensure that homeless students have access to the same educational programs and services that we provide to all students in our district. We strive to find and identify homeless youth and waive all barriers for enrollment, attendance, and transportation to encourage every student’s success.
See the additional information to find out more about how TASD supports all laws and acts to ensure every child has the right to a good education and no child is left behind.
SAP
The Student Assistance Program (SAP) is designed to help school personnel identify issues that pose a barrier to student learning and success.
Please contact the school counseling office if your child exhibits any of the following behaviors:
- Withdrawal from family, friends, or school
- Changing friends; no longer spends time with old friends
- Unexplained physical injuries
- Talking about suicide
- Depressed
- Defying authority
- Acting aggressively
- Lying
- Sudden drop in grades
- Experimenting with drugs or alcohol
- Disclosure of home/family issues
- Continual attendance issues
- Difficulty relating to other students
The experts in our Threat Assessment Teams assess and intervene when necessary.
Read more about how we support our elementary students through the ESAP program on the Elementary School Counseling page. | https://www.gorockets.org/Student-Services |
Who is eligible?
School bus transportation is available to resident students in grades one through twelve who live beyond a quarter mile of the school. Extra consideration is given to children in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten.
Transportation is also provided for students attending private and parochial schools within fifteen miles of the child's home. Families with children attending non-public schools are reminded that requests for transportation must be submitted to the school district every year by April 1st of the preceding year (click here for the Transportation Request Form). Transportation will follow the calendar of the child's school. However, transportation will not be provided when the Pocantico Hills Central School District is closed.
If you have any questions or special concerns regarding transportation schedules, please call Jane Anastasi at 631-2440 ext. 707 or stop by the Business Office.
School Bus Safety Rules & Student Responsitilibies During COVID-19
In order to maintain the safest possible transportation for all Pocantico students, we are implementing the following additional safety rules:
Parents, please discuss these rules with your children.
- All families must assure their child is ready to ride before arriving at the bus stop. Make sure your child is feeling well and wearing a face mask.
- Students should be at their stops 5 minutes before their scheduled time and maintain social distancing at school bus stops.
- All passengers must wait for the driver’s directions to get on the bus. One at a time.
- All students will board the bus in a single file and occupy their assigned seats as directed by the bus monitor. Students are not permitted to change their seats at this time.
- Students must stay seated with masks and seatbelts on for the duration of the trip.
- Whenever possible, students should refrain from touching surfaces like windows, seats, etc!
- Students should stay seated and wait until the bus driver or monitor directs them before removing their seatbelts and disembarking the bus.
- Be a good passenger. Follow the bus drivers and monitor instructions at all times.
- No eating or drinking on the bus.
Please note: All students will be assigned to ride the same bus to and from school. Unfortunately, we are not able to allow changes for playdates or other social engagements at this time. If there is an emergency situation requiring a bus change, please contact Jane Anastasi at X707, before 2:30 PM or the Principal’s office at X153 and we will do our best to accommodate the situation.
Ride 360
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We have migrated our transportation system to Traversa. You are now able to look at your child's routing information directly from the Ride 360 app and receive real-time notification about any transportation changes instantaneously. Click here for instructions on how to access the Traversa Ride 360 mobile application.
Request for Transportation Form
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All requests for transportation to private or parochial schools must be submitted by April 1st.
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BUS ROUTES
Bus routes are developed annually providing stops that are safe and allow the driver to pick up the most children with the least stops. Door-to-door transportation is not provided. Routes are sent home in August of each year.
Please note: This year students will be assigned to a Route Number instead of a specific bus number.
To identify your bus, please look for the Red Route number in the window on the passenger side of the bus.
*Times and locations are approximate and subject to change.
BUS STOPS
Bus riders are expected to be at their bus stops at least five minutes before their scheduled time. Please make sure that your child is aware of the assigned bus stop and designated time. These estimated times might vary due to traffic, number of riders and weather conditions.
If your child is not using the bus that day, please call the school at 631-2440 ext 707 so others will not be delayed by unnecessary stops.
Holiday Schedule
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The district will not provide transportation to any location on the following holidays: | https://www.pocanticohills.org/domain/71 |
Obviously, daily attendance plays a critical role in the overall success of each student, especially in high school. To increase your student’s chances for academic success, Mission Bay High School has established the following Attendance Policy. Please read the expectations below carefully:
- ALL ABSENCES must be cleared with a telephone call from the parent/guardian within FIVE days of the student’s absence (858-279-1313,
- extension 110.) Absences not cleared within that time will be considered “unexcused” or “truant.” Students are expected to make up unexcused absences or truancies by attending Saturday School (Attendance at one four-hour Saturday School clears four “period absences” or one full day’s absence.) Saturday School provides students with opportunities to receive structured instructional support from credentialed teachers on staff.
- California Educational Code sections 46010 and 48205 identify approved reasons for absence from school:
- Excused Absences: personal illness (may require a doctor’s note), personal medical appointments, funeral services of parent, sibling, grandparent, or any relative living in child’s household, personal court appearances (requires verification), and district-recognized religious holidays.
- Unexcused Absences: transportation issues (car/traffic problems), personal/family “problems,” vacations or trips out of town, babysitting of siblings, accompanying parents to work, “translating” for family members, oversleeping, or any other reason not listed above as “excused.”
- Please schedule your student’s medical appointments as much as possible OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL HOURS to reduce his or her absences from class. If a student must be excused for a medical appointment during the school day, please call the Attendance Office in advance to request a “Blue Slip.” Students with “Blue Slips” will check out through the Attendance Office. A signed doctor’s note is required to excuse these absences.
- Students who miss more than three periods of class “unexcused” or “truant” in a school year are expected to attend Saturday School (8:00 am to 12:00 pm) to clear these absences. Because unexcused absences may lower citizenship grades and result in athletic ineligibility, students may attend Saturday School to clear these absences. Students must clear all assigned Saturday School obligations to be eligible to attend school dances. Moreover, seniors must clear all assigned Saturday School obligations to participate in the Commencement ceremony.
Extensive absences from school seriously jeopardize students’ opportunities for academic success. As a result, there are no “contracts” with students and their parents to excuse class time missed for other than state-excused absences (see above.) Please plan family vacations during district-scheduled breaks from school. | https://www.sandiegounified.org/schools/node/36013044 |
With most businesses and all schools closed to prevent the spread of the virus, families throughout Vietnam have felt the effects of the pandemic in their pockets. Schools are now reopening, but the economic hardship and months away from the classroom have put many children at high risk of dropping out of school. This is how Blue Dragon works to prevent that from happening.
When children across Vietnam enjoyed their Lunar New Year school break in January, nobody imagined three months would pass until they could return to their classrooms again. Temporarily closing down all schools and universities was one of Vietnam’s first measures to contain the spread of coronavirus. Since then, businesses have closed and parents have lost their jobs; and many teens have started working in informal jobs, such as construction, to help their families make ends meet.
With the epidemic now under control and classes starting to resume, Blue Dragon is beginning to learn about students who haven’t returned to school, particularly in poor rural areas.
Two of these areas are the northern provinces of Dien Bien and Ha Giang, where many students from remote ethnic community villages attend boarding schools. Without the free meals provided there, the long school break has meant many families have been struggling to feed their children. As a result, these students are more likely to quit school to try and make a living in farming or construction.
In Dien Bien and Ha Giang, as well as in central Hue province, most schools reopened in the first week of May. And although it is still early to make an accurate assessment, the first data we are seeing from schools gives reason for concern.
In northern Ha Giang province, for instance, Blue Dragon has been supporting 165 students who live in extreme poverty. Of these, 50 have not returned to school in this first week.
“We still need to wait a bit to have data that correctly reflects the situation,” explains Nam Xuan Pham, who manages Blue Dragon’s project in the area. Some students may be absent because of a lack of transportation in isolated areas, and other teens could be helping their families with farming tasks but still intend to go back to class. “We have already begun to investigate these cases,” he says.
These 165 children are at a particularly high risk of quitting school either because they are vulnerable to human trafficking, or because of their financial situation, or both; but there are many more students in these three provinces who may also face this risk. So how does Blue Dragon identify these children to ensure all of them receive an education?
Thorough coordination to identify children at risk
In Dien Bien and Ha Giang provinces, Blue Dragon works closely with secondary and high schools in areas considered hotspots for human trafficking. In these cases, there is a warning system in place: social workers are notified directly by the schools when a child stops attending lessons or if there’s a suspicion a student is being groomed by human traffickers.
The coronavirus crisis, however, has affected many other families in these provinces who were already poor or near-poor. In these households, the breadwinners work mostly in manual labour that cannot be done remotely, and so these parents haven’t been able to earn an income during the social isolation period. And a substantial number of them no longer have a job to return to now the restrictions have been lifted. These circumstances make their children more likely to quit school.
In order to identify these children at risk, Blue Dragon’s warning system will now be expanded from the schools with whom we work in more vulnerable communes to a district level.
To achieve this, Blue Dragon liaises with the Department of Education in key districts. As classes resume, the Department will notify Blue Dragon about the students who haven’t returned. That way, Blue Dragon will be able to work with the schools to find out the reasons behind the child’s absence, offer support and raise the alarm if we suspect trafficking or exploitation.
Once the absent children have been identified, “it is crucial that we conduct home visits to verify if they have indeed dropped out,” says Thuy Thu Nguyen, Blue Dragon’s program manager in Dien Bien. This task is particularly challenging in the mountainous northern provinces, where houses tend to be isolated and scattered across steep, winding roads and dirt paths. Visiting all families would take Blue Dragon a long time, but the urgency of the situation demands a swift response.
That is why Blue Dragon coordinates with teachers in these areas. “They know which students haven’t gone back to class, so we support them with transport and expenses, so they can visit the families and find out about their situation,” says Nam.
Listening, understanding and tailoring solutions
With the reports we receive from teachers, Blue Dragon is able to assess the circumstances of each family. “Once we have confirmation that a student plans to stop studying, we talk to the family to identify the real reason why the child hasn’t returned to school and offer a solution based on their needs,” says Thuy. An important part of these conversations is listening to the families’ concerns, as well as emphasizing the importance of education.
When the children stop attending school due to financial struggles, Blue Dragon can provide emergency food aid, as well as some support to help with essential expenses and school fees.
In some cases, kids leave for big cities to try and find jobs, which commonly turn out to be exploitative. That was the case of three teenage survivors of human trafficking who Blue Dragon had been supporting. The teenagers took jobs in construction and hospitality in their provincial capital, but after three months of work, none of them received any payment. “When this happens, we work closely with the provincial authorities to rescue the child and support the family,” explains Blue Dragon’s coordinator in Hue, where children have traditionally migrated to Ho Chi Minh City in search of ways to make a living.
When there is reason to believe a child may have been trafficked, Blue Dragon will immediately contact the police and, if necessary, conduct a rescue operation to bring them home.
Blue Dragon believes education is the most powerful tool to break out of poverty, and essential to keep children safe from human trafficking. We will continue to monitor and assist all families who need support to make sure children across Vietnam remain in school. You too can ensure kids stay in school by donating to Blue Dragon’s Emergency Appeal here. | https://www.bluedragon.org/latest-news/keeping-children-in-school-in-the-aftermath-of-covid-19/ |
Ottawa Student Transportation Authority warns short-term school bus cancellations are possible when classes resume
The Ottawa Student Transportation Authority warns school bus trips could be cancelled at a moment's notice due to COVID-19 when students return to class next week.
Students with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board and Ottawa Catholic School Board return to class on Monday for the first time since before Christmas. Classes have been held online since Jan. 5.
Yellow school bus and van service for Kindergarten to Grade 12 students will resume on Monday after the break.
However, the organization responsible for all school transportation say there "may be an increase in service disruptions" related to COVID-19 short-and-long-term.
"We are doing everything we possibly can to get as much service out on Monday as possible," said Ottawa Student Transportation Authority general manager Vicky Kyriaco.
"One of the issues that we can't control, of course, is whether drivers are going to be sick or not and everybody has to isolate along the way. So, we are hoping as many as possible will be out on day one."
The Ottawa Student Transportation Authority says drivers may be forced to self-isolate due to COVID-19, meaning short-term cancellations may occur day-to-day.
"Depending on circumstances, some routes may return to normal within a day or two, while others may be cancelled for a longer period of time," said the OSTA.
All short-term cancellations will be posted on the OSTA's delay and cancellation page. Any long-term cancellations will be posted to the OCDSB and OCSB cancellations lists.
Kyriaco says the Ottawa Student Transportation Authority is also dealing with a driver shortage that has been plaguing the system since the start of the school year.
"We still have a driver shortage. We are still working to find a solution," said Kyriaco during an interview on CTV Morning Live.
"We have had some drivers, new drivers have been hired and we're continuing to work with the operators to help them recruit and get the word out that we still need drivers."
Approximately 85 per cent of school bus drivers are fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated drivers must undergo rapid antigen testing twice a week.
TIPS FOR PARENTS
The Ottawa Student Transportation Authority is asking parents and guardians to assess their child's health before they board the bus.
"If your child has COVID-19 symptoms, do not put them on the bus/van or drop them off at school," said the OSTA.
Kyriaco says there is still a seating plan in place for all school buses, with students assigned a seat.
"It's really important for parents to remind their kids to sit in their assigned seat."
All students are required to wear a mask on the bus. Drivers have been provided personal protective equipment, including non-fit tested N95 masks or medical-grade masks, face shields, goggles and rapid antigen tests.
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Ottawa's top doctor to provide COVID-19 update one week before restrictions begin to easeDr. Vera Etches will address a special Ottawa Board of Health meeting at 3 p.m. to discuss the current situation in Ottawa, and answer questions from board members.
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Ottawa begins clearing snowbanks off streets and sidewalks following record-breaking stormMotorists are being advised to watch for temporary 'No Parking' signs on streets, as the next phase of the clean-up begins following last Monday's record-breaking snowstorm buried Ottawa. | https://www.iheartradio.ca/580-cfra/news/ottawa-student-transportation-authority-warns-short-term-school-bus-cancellations-are-possible-when-classes-resume-1.16933349 |
Representative O’Day a Key Player in Securing $11.3 Million for Municipalities and Students Experiencing Homelessness
BOSTON—A little over a week after the Governor signed the Fiscal Year 2013 state budget into law, the State Representative Jim O’Day, the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless and other anti-poverty advocates across the state are still celebrating the allocation of $11.3 million in funding that will ensure school stability for students experiencing homelessness. The initiative to secure the funding had widespread, bi-partisan support throughout the Legislature, and from cities and towns across the Commonwealth.
Representative James O’ Day (D-West Boylston), a champion of issues pertaining to homelessness and a key supporter of the budget campaign to appropriate the McKinney-Vento transportation funding, says: “I am happy to see that the McKinney-Vento funding was included in the final budget for FY ’13. Worcester reported over 2,500 students experiencing homelessness in the 2010-2011 school year, and the city is projected to have spent $425,000 in Fiscal Year 2012 on McKinney-Vento transportation costs. West Boylston reported 8 students experiencing homelessness, and the town is projected to spend over $2,000 in transporting students experiencing homelessness under McKinney-Vento in FY’12. The ability to receive reimbursement for these expenditures will provide an enormous amount of relief to the city’s budget.”
The McKinney-Vento Act is a federal law that ensures students experiencing homelessness have access to a stable, quality education that meets their unique needs. The McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act has many provisions to help students experiencing homelessness overcome the enormous obstacles that they face both inside and outside of school.
One such provision pertaining to transporting students experiencing homelessness to and from school became the subject of much concern and debate over the past year due to the financial hardship it can place on municipalities. This provision allows students experiencing homelessness and residing in temporary shelter outside their original community to attend school either in the district where they currently reside (the “host community”), or at their original school (“school of origin”), if that is in there best interest. If a student chooses to attend their school of origin while residing in another community, the school of origin and the host community must share the costs of transporting the student to and from school.
The budget campaign came about this fall, after the Division of Local Mandates in the Office of State Auditor Suzanne Bump determined that it is the state’s responsibility to fund transportation costs associated with the McKinney-Vento Act. The Auditor’s report also found that if state funding is not appropriated, communities can seek a court exemption from complying with the McKinney-Vento Act, which would have disastrous consequences for students experiencing homelessness.
Robyn Frost, Executive Director of the Coalition, says: “By appropriating this funding, the Legislature and Governor Patrick are ensuring that students experiencing homelessness can continue their education with minimal disruption and that municipal budgets are not negatively impacted. The Coalition applauds of those who worked tirelessly to secure this funding and would especially like to thank Representative O’Day for championing this issue during the budget debate. Representative O’Day has been a committed advocate for ending and preventing homelessness and poverty, and his work on these issues in the Legislature has been invaluable.”
While West Boylston, Worcester, and communities across the state certainly won big with the funding appropriation, the biggest winners are the students who are experiencing homelessness and are eligible for transportation under the McKinney-Vento Act. These students often have little to no stability or structure in their life aside from school, and with serious consequences; a lack of stable housing has a severe and negative impact on the social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and behavioral development of children.
With regards to the school stability the funding will provide, Representative O’Day says: “Besides the obvious positive fiscal impact the funding will have on cities and towns throughout the state, it is critically important that we adequately fund student’s transportation needs, regardless of their housing status, in the name of confluence in education.”
Kelly Turley, Director of Legislative Advocacy for the Coalition, elaborates further: “The school stability options provided by the McKinney-Vento Act help to alleviate some of the problems faced by school districts and students with high homelessness rates; allowing students to stabilize their education by remaining in their school of origin benefits the student and the school community as a whole. The Coalition is thrilled that both students and schools will continue to benefit from educational stabilization efforts due to the appropriation of the state funds.”
Numerous studies show that homelessness negatively impacts academic achievement across all levels. For instance, national numbers show that, compared with stably housed classmates, students experiencing homelessness consistently have lower grades and test scores than their housed peers, change schools an average of 3 times per year, are more likely to be held back a year in school, and are frequently absent. Attending one school consistently has positive impacts on the academic success of these students and mitigates some of these negative impacts that high mobility and homelessness has on a student.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is tasked with the process of creating, implementing, and overseeing a reimbursement system for all communities requesting funding for costs associated with transporting students under McKinney-Vento. | http://www.jimoday.org/article/representative-o%E2%80%99day-key-player-securing-113-million-municipalities-and-students |
Education law concerns the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems in the United States. Education law also concerns the principles and government policy making in the realm of education.
Education: An Overview
Education, as a government function, is administered through the public school system by the Department of Education. States, however, have primary responsibility for the maintenance and operation of public schools.
The Federal Government, having an interest in education, created The National Institute of Education to improve education in the United States. Issues that arise under education law include:
- Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs and/or activities that receive federal financial assistance.
- Discrimination in Education, on the basis of (discussed more lengthily below) race, age, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, or other civil rights violations.
- Special Education, which gives disabled children equal access to the education system, and allows them special accommodations in order to help them succeed in doing so.
- Education Reform, the constantly-evolving movement toward the goal of improving public education in the best interest of students and teachers.
Education Law: The Rules
State constitutions require each state to provide a school system where children may receive an education. State legislatures exercise power over schools, consistent with the state’s constitution, but usually delegate power to a state board of education.
Let’s go over some basics:
Education law is the legal discipline that covers all issues pertaining to schools and public education. From kindergarten through higher education, it is responsible for:
- Protecting the rights of students, teachers, and staff,
- Maintaining school safety, preventing discrimination,
- Seeing that the conduct and discipline of both staff and students is in accordance with the law and school policies,
- Planning appropriate curriculums and providing necessary amenities to fulfill those curriculums,
- Providing educational options.
Education law governs the liability, curriculum standards, testing procedures, school finance, student financial aid, constitutional rights (such as the bounds of student expression on school grounds) and school safety. In the last several decades, public education has seen substantial legal changes, and as such, the nature of education law is constantly evolving to either meet or enforce those changes. Most education reform has been led by the states, and each state has different laws in this area. There are, of course, federally-enforced education reforms that affect public schools in every state, such as the 2001 “No Child Left Behind” Act (NCLB) which was enacted to improve teacher and school accountability for students’ school performance across the entire US.
Private Schools
Education law also submits that the guardians of attending students have the fundamental right to direct the education of their children, including the right to choose for their children to go to a private school. But how do private school policies interact with federal policies? In most cases, if the private school hasn’t directly received federal funds, they are not required to follow these laws. However, states may still have the power to regulate private schools if, for instance, the school in question received funds in some amount in order to provide scholarships for private school tuition, fees, and transportation expenses for students who meet certain eligibility criteria based upon education law. If a private school has received direct federal funds for such a case, that school may be subject to federal regulation, should actions of the private school warrant them for lawful conduct overview.
The Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974
This EEO Act was an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and came into effect when school boards in the United States were involved in court-required busing of students to desegregate schools. In the amendment, Congress grants--in expansive language--that equal educational opportunity were undermined by the nominally restricted definition of segregation in the EaSE Act. EEOA, on the other hand, explicitly defines that no state shall deny equal educational opportunity to any individual on the basis of race, color, sex, or national origin in schools and institutions of higher learning. Additionally, the Act permits the United States to intervene in pending suits alleging discrimination. Should a school be found guilty of violating equal educational opportunity, it would face immediate exclusion from and the denial of benefits in programs or activities receiving federal funds.
Special Education: How Does It Help?
Special education laws give children with disabilities, including their parents, important rights. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a federal law that gives families of special education children (up to the age of 26) the right to:
- Have their children assessed or tested to determine special education eligibility and needs
- Inspect and review school records relating to their child
- Attend an annual “individualized education program” (IEP) meeting and develop a written IEP plan with representatives of the local school district
- Resolve disputes with the school district through an impartial administrative and legal process.
Special ed law also calls for guardians to be an integral part of their education, to aid with--but not limited to--the children’s attitudes toward school, their social skills and behavior, and the likelihood that they will take more challenging classes and succeed in them. IDEA guarantees the guardians of disabled students the following rights:
- To participate in meetings related to the evaluation, identification, and educational placement of their child, which may typically be the responsibility of the school administrative board or faculty;
- To participate in meetings related to the provision of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to their child, which protects the rights of individuals with disabilities in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance;
- To be members of any group that is deciding whether their child is a “child with a disability” and meets the criteria for special education and related services;
- To be members of the team that develops, reviews, and revises the individualized education program (IEP) for their child. The IE program is designed to address each child’s unique learning style in order to reach specific educational goals, providing educational support and services to help reach those goals (additionally, if the guardian/s cannot attend an IEP meeting, the school must use other methods to ensure their participation, including individual or conference calls).
That being said, the rest--whether to participate, how much to participate--is up to you.
Moreover, it is the school district’s responsibility, once a guardian has alerted administration, to identify, locate, and evaluate children with disabilities. IDEA defines “children with disabilities” as individuals between the ages of three and twenty-one with one or more of the following conditions:
- Mental Retardation
- Hearing Impairment (deafness included)
- Speech or Language Impairment
- Visual Impairment (blindness included)
- Serious Emotional Disturbance
- Orthopedic Impairment
- Autism
- Traumatic Brain Injury
- Specific Learning Disability
- Other Health Impairment
In addition to the above disabilities, there must also be evidence that a non-specified disability adversely affects a child’s educational performance, in which event they may still qualify for special education under IDEA. Following the “educational goal” track expressed by IEP, From the time a child is found eligible for special education, he or she must should be reevaluated every three years in order to determine if any changes to their IEP program are in order, including either deeper inclusion in special education programs, or the transition to a schedule populated by more typical classes.
Do You Have A Question About Education Law?
It’s important to discuss questions pertaining to education law with a lawyer. Education law can be a very confusing and stressful field to navigate. This is understandable, as questions regarding education law usually deal with a family member. Still, everyone has a right to understand their rights in education law. | https://askthelawyers.com/learn/practice-area/education-law |
An accident is defined as a collision between the school bus/van and a moving or stationary object. An accident can result in vehicle damage and/or passenger injury. The driver shall report EVERY ACCIDENT IMMEDIATELY whether students are on board at the time or not to the transportation office.
These procedures should be carried out as quickly as possible.
- Stop the vehicle at the scene of the accident, no matter how minor. Set the parking brake, activate the hazard warning flashers to alert other motorists, turn off all other lights and electrical switches, and turn off the ignition switch and remove the key.
- After the incident do not move your bus. Documentation of the final positions of the vehicles involved in the incident is extremely important to the accident investigation. Move the vehicle only when directed by the police. Do not move the bus simply to let traffic pass.
- Remain calm and in control. Your attitude and actions will have an enormous impact on how the students react during the aftermath of the incident, especially with special needs students. Reassure the students.
- Assess the situation after the incident. If a fire is present or the potential for a fire exists, evacuate the students. Also, look for any possible hazardous materials that may present a danger to you or the students. Evacuate students if a danger exists from chemicals, vapors, or other toxic substances.
- Check students for injuries, if necessary, administer first aid to injured students. Do not exceed your limits providing first aid. Do not move any injured student unless absolutely necessary.
- Contact the transportation office via radio or phone (973 664-2354). Give the office the following information: your exact location, report on injuries, any danger of fire, is the bus being evacuated. If base does not respond, please repeat your basic message again, giving your bus number each time. Base may hear you but you are unable to hear base. If evacuating the bus, ensure the radio is on by pressing the power button on it and place the microphone out the driver’s side window for possible use outside the bus. All other drivers should clear the airwaves whenever there is an emergency unless a “Relay” of communications is necessary. The transportation office will contact the local police department during normal working hours. When the transportation office is closed, the driver will contact the Transportation Dispatcher or if it is an emergency, dial 911 then contact the Dispatcher.
- If a driver is experiencing a mechanical breakdown on a major highway, the driver is to assess as to how perilous the situation is (possibility of fire, being struck by any other moving vehicles, etc.). Once this is determined driver should gather the following information before contacting 911 requesting police assistance:
- Who you are (Driver Name, the entity you work for, vehicle number);
- Exact location;
- Number of passengers on board (students, coaches and/or chaperones);
- Depiction of the incident (flat tire, overheating, etc.);
- Protect the scene until police arrival;
- If an evacuation is needed, let the 911 dispatcher know and if possible, wait for the police arrival. If not, identify a safe location away from any possible danger, to evacuate all passengers;
- Then contact MHRD dispatcher on duty and relay all pertinent information and steps taken, then await for instructions.
- Protect the accident scene by placing reflective triangle warning devices in their appropriate locations warning oncoming traffic of a disabled vehicle. Make sure to activate your 4-way flashers. If you have evacuated students be sure they are in a safe area and remain together.
- Account for all passengers. Provide first responders with the exact number of students on board and if any have special needs.
- Request anyone who had observed the accident to remain until the police arrive. Jot down license plate numbers of vehicles at the scene, especially of potential witnesses who are leaving before the police arrive. If no witnesses are available, identify the first people who arrived at the scene.
- Do not release students from the accident scene investigation unless instructed by law enforcement, school officials, or unless emergency medical treatment is required. Cooperate with the authorities. As the police and emergency personnel arrive they will take over.
- When talking with other motorists, be professional and polite, but admit nothing, and don’t argue. What you say at the accident scene may be admissible in court. Do not discuss the accident with anyone other than law enforcement or school administration.
- If approached by the media, politely inform them that the district policy does not allow drivers to comment at the scene. Instruct the media to talk with the School Business Administrator (973-664-2281).
- In each bus/van there is a Motor Vehicle Accident Report Kit. The kit, vehicle registration, and insurance card are to be kept in the document holder located in the driver’s compartment. Upon returning to the transportation office after the accident the completed “Preliminary School Bus Accident Report” is to be turned in to the Transportation Coordinator. The Coordinator will then submit the report to the State Department of Education as required. Any documents received from the investigating police officer are to be turned in to the Coordinator (Accident Report #, Case #, etc.). | https://www.manula.com/manuals/mhrd/district-transportation-handbook/19.20/en/topic/accident-procedures |
AFAP Vietnam sought to improve the quality of education services by conducting a review of a government-supported program in education, collecting people’s feedback on education services, and assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of school construction projects.
Sector
Sub-Sector
Problem Type
Methodology / Approach
Objectives
Improve the quality of education services through a series of social accountability approaches to assess the implementation of school-finance policies
Summary
In order to improve the quality of education services, AFAP Vietnam trained local partners to track funding allocated to assist poor students, surveyed parents and students about their perceptions of education services, and facilitated collaboration between communities and officials to address problems. The project focused specifically on a school-finance system requiring greater financial contributions from communities and the private sector (the “socialization” of education ), and an accompanying cash transfer program to help poor families cope with education-associated costs, such as for materials, school uniforms, and transportation. AFAP’s effort had three phases:
- Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) involving surveys of schools officials and cash transfer recipients in order to identify any leakages, delays, or other irregularities in the delivery, receipt, and use of funds.
- A Citizen Report Card (CRC) to assess the experiences and perceptions of parents and students with regard to the availability, quality and accessibility of education services under the socialization system.
- Social Audits, which brought together local authorities and community members to achieve consensus on problems with school infrastructure, and to identify solutions.
While communities have largely welcomed the socialization system, AFAP Vietnam and their local partners found a number of implementation issues that affect both the quality and accessibility of public education. Specifically, complicated and inconsistent procedures in the cash transfer policy’s implementation led to delays in the delivery of funds for learning support, discrepancies between allocated and received amounts, and unauthorized, mandatory contributions to schools from recipients. Parents were required to contribute to school infrastructure but were not informed of how the funding was used. During the construction process, beneficiaries had limited access to information and also very little opportunity for participation to address their needs and requirements for the infrastructure project. To address these issues, project staff shared findings and recommendations with local stakeholders, and advocated for increased efficiency in the implementation of the socialization program in education. | http://saatlas.org/project/making-community-voices-heard-in-education-under-the-socialization-process |
The DOE provides transportation services to students based on their grade and distance from school. In addition, students with disabilities may be provided transportation on their Individualized Education Programs (IEP). Generally, students in K-6 receive yellow school buses contracted by the DOE. The Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT), in coordination with the schools, is responsible for the bus routes. Students in K-2 are eligible for free transportation if they live ½ mile or more from their schools. Students in 3rd through 6th grades must live one mile or more from their schools to be eligible for free transportation. Students in grades 7-12 are eligible for full-fare Metrocards if they live 1 ½ miles or more from their schools.
In order to qualify for yellow bus service, students must live in the same district as their school or borough (depending upon the program), with the exception of those students in temporary housing. Students with disabilities do not automatically receive yellow school bus transportation, but may receive it, as discussed earlier.
Busing for students in temporary housing
The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (McKinney Act) is a federal law that provides federal money for homeless shelter programs. Among its many provisions, it seeks to ensure that homeless children have transportation to and from school free of charge, allowing children to attend the school they were last enrolled in. A recent study conducted by Advocates for Children revealed that 114,659 children, an all-time high, were considered homeless at some point during the 2017-18 school year. To put that into perspective, there are approximately 1.1 million students attending NYC schools. I recently received a call from a client in a shelter in the Bronx. She said she had to move out of her home recently and into the shelter and didn’t know whom to turn to for getting busing for her children to their schools. The McKinney-Vento or Homeless liaison for the district where the child goes to school is responsible for the transportation of those children in temporary housing. It should be noted that this applies to students attending charter schools as well, in most cases. Should parents transfer their children to the local school where they are temporarily living, the students are still entitled to the same transportation services offered to those students permanently living in the district. The responsible school district must provide transportation for the duration of the temporary housing and through the end of the year when the student finds permanent housing; and sometimes longer in certain instances.
Transportation must be provided to students who are temporarily housed within 50 miles, one way, of their school building. I have had this occur when students are rendered homeless for one reason or another and end up temporarily staying with a relative who may not live in the city.
What to do if you have a transportation issue
If you have a transportation issue, the first step is to call the school. Have the school contact OPT to address the problem. Note that it typically takes 5-7 days to route a student once OPT receives her information from her school.
The next step is to contact OPT at (718) 392-8855 or [email protected]. Ask to file a complaint and then write down the complaint number.
Finally, make sure you call OPT every day there is a problem and continue to keep a record of the complaint numbers and issues. Do not be afraid to ask to speak with an OPT supervisor if you feel your issues are not being resolved. Finally, if your child has transportation on his IEP, you may have a right to file for an impartial hearing over busing issues.
Hopefully the silver lining of the issues of busing this year will be that the DOE has to finally address this painful Autumn ritual.
Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions. | https://www.specialedlegalinfo.com/buses/ |
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